


Broadcast: Live

by nevtelenwriting



Category: Criminal Minds (US TV)
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Bottom Spencer Reid, Branding, Caning, Drug Addiction and Recovery, Ear Boxing, Hospitalization, Hurt Spencer Reid, M/M, Mild Self Harm, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Reid does not want help but the BAU hits him with a care stick, Rough Sex, Russian Roulette, Season 2 Centric Reid, Therapy, depictions of torture
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-19
Updated: 2020-07-12
Packaged: 2021-03-03 23:01:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 6
Words: 20,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24813496
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nevtelenwriting/pseuds/nevtelenwriting
Summary: On 2/5/07 at 21:36 Dr. Spencer Reid is taken from Tobias Hankel’s home. Two days later at 17:23, the first live feed is broadcasted to the BAU.Reid is recovered 51 hours after abduction. Only 48 minutes of this was broadcasted to the BAU.Reid refuses to talk about the other 50 hours.
Relationships: Derek Morgan & Spencer Reid, Emily Prentiss & Spencer Reid, Ethan/Spencer Reid, Jennifer "JJ" Jareau & Spencer Reid, Penelope Garcia & Spencer Reid, Spencer Reid & Aaron Hotchner, Tobias Hankel/Spencer Reid
Comments: 67
Kudos: 326





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> *stumbles into the Criminal Minds fandom 15 years late with cold Starbucks* What did you say? Another Tobias Hankel/Spencer Reid fic? Say no more, lets light this dumpster on fire. I never saw a solid reason why Tobias seemed so sure Reid was “given to him for a reason” or why he had any sort of special interest in Reid, so here we go. 
> 
> In which I really enjoy recovery fic, and I also enjoy trash, and I really wished the show addressed Reid’s recovery as much as it addressed his whump. How this boy ain’t had a full-on breakdown and locked himself in a basement for a month idek. There’s a word for it, CM, it’s called therapy.

_You cannot defeat darkness by running from it, nor can you conquer your inner demons by hiding them from the world. In order to defeat the darkness, you must bring it into the light._

_– Seth Adam Smith_

* * *

02/15/2007. Submitting Agents: Spencer Reid, Dr.; SAC Aaron Hotchner 

Incident report and investigative summary of SA Reid captivity under Subject, Tobias Hankel.

On 2/5/07 at 21:36 SSA Dr. Spencer Reid was taken from Subject Hankel’s home. Case report logs a 51-hour time from 21:36 2/5/07 to 00:28, 2/8/07.

Item 01: addresses and geographical locations of all incidents discussed.

Item 02: timeline of interactions with Hankel, broken into the Subject’s known personalities, designated as: Raphael, Charles, and Tobias.

Item 03: observational summary of Hankel’s behaviors and environment.

Item 04: summary of effected SA Reid medical prognosis and psychological status report.

Case Report Pending, Open Status.

**

Reid sat stiffly in the chair provided, masked it with correct posture and hands folded center in his lap. Parts of him still ached, even those that had scarred. The seat was cushioned, softer than the standard FBI issue. The office was quieter, too; soundproofed, he noted.

The woman in front of him gave him a genial, but sincere smile. There was a neat, folded questionnaire on the heavy oak desk in front of her. Reid read the title upside down: _85B, Evaluation Form Type 4.2._ His name was filled out across the top line. To the left of her was a file, formatted as one of the incident reports rather than a case, so process of elimination meant it was his incident. Next to the form was a blank notepad, a pen placed on top off center and at an angle. Reid inwardly grimaced, kept his face relaxed.

“Good morning, Dr. Reid.”

“Good morning, Dr. Priuthi,” Reid parroted, caught himself matching her intonation. He brought up a smile to match, as well, and hoped she didn’t notice.

She made no comment on it regardless, but continued to smile benignly. “Are you ready to begin your psychological evaluation?”

Reid’s mouth twitched, but he kept up the smile. “Of course.”

**

_2/8/07._

Reid was taken around 9:30pm Monday night from Hankel’s home. A little over two days later he was wrapped in a trauma blanket in an ambulance, a precautionary dose of naloxone shot up his nose while absorbing tentative statements from EMS that kept pushing his need to visit a hospital, answering even more tentative questions from FBI field agents he didn’t know who needed debriefing on the night. Hotch only asked if he wanted water or anything to eat. Gideon asked whose car he wanted to ride in to the hospital, completing ignoring the paramedics’ exasperated looks when Gideon removed Reid from the ambulance. Reid slumped against him with the relief of not riding alone.

Routine questions wrapped up quicker than normal, since paramedics pressed to get him out of there as soon as possible, given his recent seizure. Reid tried not to flinch when they mentioned that CPR brought him back level, but once the adrenaline and naloxone wore off they had no idea if his heart would give out again.

Before they left, Garcia approached him, looking both scared to touch and ready to hug-tackle him out of the car. He smiled at her anyway, and said, “Thank you for finding me.”

In uncharacteristically quiet fashion, all she meekly asked was, “Can I hug you?”

He ended up hugging three people that night; Hotch, JJ, and Garcia. Though Morgan gave him a shoulder squeeze and Prentiss gave him an awkward pat on the arm. Gideon also never left his side, visibly stopping himself from having a hand on his shoulder the entire time he was being checked by paramedics and looming the rest of the time like a fretful hen. Reid smiled at the image.

Garcia hugged him for a solid minute, nearly crushing him from shoulders up in the world’s warmest, softest bear-hug, and promised an epic night out breaking speed limits in her car when he was back home. Reid was too tired to feel ashamed when he sagged into her, his shoulders shaking when he started to cry.

Of course, they all wanted to know what happened in those two days. Morbid curiosity and excessive sympathy were practically job requirements in the BAU.

Reid didn’t see the point in reiterating every detail of his two days in the cabin. The relevant information was already broadcasted. FBI had seized Tobias Hankel’s hard-drives and informed all potential victims of the hack. The team had appropriately profiled Hankel and found Reid alive. Hankel was dead and could not harm anyone else.

Reid already knew what happened to him. He understood the why, the barest sense anyone could when held captive by a victim of a psychotic break.

“Victim?” JJ asked, when he said it off handedly asking the team about Hankel’s home. They were driving in the car, on the way to the hospital he would be forced to stay in for at least a few days, before transfer to a hospital near D.C.

JJ was the one who blurted it out, but Gideon used the rear-view mirror to look at him. Scrutinizing him. Reid cleared his throat, and clarified, succinctly and matter of fact. “You found evidence of abuse. Psychosis or not, he was still a victim before he became what he was.”

JJ thinned her mouth, a careful response and said nothing to it. Gideon didn’t either.

**

“Alright, all of your answers are consistent with your form.” Dr. Priuthi said with a sigh. She returned the paperwork to its title page and placed it carefully on her desk. Reid exhaled a slow sigh through his nose, as well.

“Is that everything then?” Reid asked conversationally, even managed to sound polite. All Reid wanted was to end this chapter of his life as quickly as possible, and protocol seemed bent on dragging out this inconvenience for as long as physically conceivable.

Reid spent four days in a Georgia hospital before they deemed him stable for travel. After that he was assigned a mandatory ten days bedrest in his claustrophobic apartment while he finished healing. It would be over two weeks since he was in the field and it felt like an odyssey, but less adventure and more wrath-of-the-gods. He was on day nine now, and after a week pestering him Reid received approval from Hotch to complete his evaluation ahead of time. Once this evaluation was approved, his report filed and house arrest sentence completed, he could, finally, put this ordeal behind him and resume his work.

However, Priuthi either was a secret sadist or had an ulterior motive hidden in her tiny, placating frame. For over an hour she made him go through that form one more time, question by question, ad nauseum as if she had lost his paperwork or simply didn’t care he had submitted detailed answers for the sole purpose of avoiding a long meeting. He could feel his pulse in his neck, his skin prickling with each answer he had to reiterate until he felt like a raw nerve sitting in her too-plush chair.

Reid knew it was not standard to go over a questionnaire in such detail after completion, not without a previous expectation of discrepancy or dishonesty. Something savage twisted up in his gut at that thought, but he ignored the gnashing.

Priuthi watched him the same quiet way as she did when asking her questions, as unreadable as a sphynx. She looked at the form, and then to her blank notepad. She folded her hands on the desktop.

“According to your paperwork, you’re ready for the field. But that is only one step of the process, as you know. Agents who undergo trauma need to have an in-person interview. Talk to someone.”

Reid shifted in his seat, cleared his throat. He didn’t know what Priuthi was getting at, stating the obvious here. “I know the procedure.”

“Okay.” She unfolded her hands, palms up, open, gesturing to him with some form of silent, unknown request. “So here we are.”

He still didn’t understand, but he had a poker face to put the best masker to shame.

“I thought that’s what we’ve been doing,” He provided politely, ignorantly.

Priuthi hummed a flat note; she seemed to hesitate for a moment, considering Reid in the quiet. Then she stated, “I’m going to come around the desk, if that’s alright?”

“It’s your office?” Reid asked with an arching brow. He didn’t know why it felt like comfort knowing the reason the doctor pulled around her chair and settled herself in front of him. She crossed one ankle over the other, hands settled in her lap, his forms forgotten.

“I read your incident report.” Priuthi stated the obvious, as if this was leading to something. “It’s very detailed.”

“Thank you.” Reid replied, slowly and cautiously, still not understanding.

“You gave explicit detail of the room, his computer systems. Itemized timeline of each interaction, even an extraordinarily comprehensive analysis on his three identities.”

“Are we,” Reid cleared his throat again, his tongue drying the longer Priuthi dragged this on, “Are we reaching a point, here?”

“You never talked about what he did, to you, specifically.”

Reid fell silent. Two heavy heart beats pulsed thick in his throat. He resisted the urge to scratch his arm. “It wasn’t relevant.”

“Wasn’t it?”

He crossed his arms so he could thumb at a jumping vein. “You saw the videos?”

Priuthi nodded, “I read the transcripts.”

Reid learned in the hospital that Garcia set up a recording for each live feed of Reid and Hankel, in the event Hankel was brought in alive and they needed evidence for prosecution. When scheduling this interview Hotch told him Dr. Priuthi had requested access to all of his case files, tried to explain it was common practice for…incidents like his. Reid swore he heard a hint of remorse when Hotch said he couldn’t deny the approval.

Reid flicked through the memories of each time the feed had been on. Charles beating him, the impossible choice that killed Pamela and Michael Hayes, his seizure, Raphael’s game to choose a friend for slaughter. Those were the only times he could remember. Nothing else was shown. He remembered crying, begging for mercy during the beatings. Not exactly unexpected. But even then, Reid felt vulnerable. It was difficult enough knowing his entire team had seen him like that. Who else would watch those videos next? With Hankel gone, at least those videos would never see court, jury, judge, Tobias—

Well, there were small mercies in his life still, it seemed.

His throat clicked uncomfortably around a dry swallow. He’d drained his water bottle in the first twenty minutes, so he’d have to deal with the creeping roughness. “Then you have a fair approximation.”

“Those were just pictures and words. I want to hear it from you.”

Reid shrugged, blowing a short, audible puff from his mouth. “To be honest? It was boring.”

Priuthi gave a controlled smile. “Did you know that most statements that begin with ‘to be honest’ are almost always followed by a lie?”

He did know that. He wasn’t watching himself. Reid inhaled a careful, calming breath, giving himself time to calculate an answer. “Both Charles and Raphael had a flair for the dramatic. Those feeds were made for an audience. Besides those, Hankel slept most of the time. Most likely due to physiological and psychological exhaustion of living as three people.”

It really _was_ mostly boring. No one mentioned that being kidnapped would be so tedious. He was alone for a lot of the time, with nothing to entertain him but cataloguing the different fetid odors of burning fish meat. Three-for-one deal serial killers apparently had packed schedules and chronic fatigue. Math reflected a near two-hour drive to Hankel’s cabin, which accounted for the rest of that night. For roughly 12 of those 51 Reid was asleep. For roughly 22 of those 51, Hankel was asleep, gone, or watching the feeds, leaving Reid alone where he either slept himself or categorized stenches. Less than a day’s worth of time he was with Raphael, Charles, or Tobias. He reported it explicitly, in order, since Hankel hadn’t removed his watch. He was alone for most of it.

Priuthi stared at him unflinching, her face like stone. “And when he wasn’t asleep?”

Reid cleared his throat again. “Can I get a glass of water?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SAC: Supervisory/Special Agent in Charge, which from my understanding is the correct title for Hotch, I think they say it once tho lmao
> 
> No but seriously, there’s no way in any holy hell that the team does not have mandatory psych evaluations after trauma. That’s just, that’s not how this works. *shoves Reid towards a therapist*


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Morgan offers advice.

_2/8/07._

Reid stared at the nurse like she spoke another language.

“Pardon me?”

The nurse looked just as confused, as well. “We need you to put on this gown? The doctors gotta assess you, hon, run some tests and make sure you’re alright.”

Reid cleared his throat. “Right.”

He had no idea why he hesitated. He’d been in hospitals before, Reid knew it was procedure.

The drive to the hospital from the cemetery grounds took nearly an hour, even with police escort and sirens blaring. They rushed him in as quick as possible to analyze his vitals and be sure the seizure he had was caused by the stress and shock only, nothing else. It made perfect, practical sense.

So here Reid was, sitting on an ER hospital bed, machines at the ready to start monitoring his vitals with a nurse patiently waiting for him to strip to his briefs. Murmuring voices filtered in from beyond the drawn curtains, as well as steadily beeping machines and shuffling beds. The regular noises of an ER, with a perfectly suitable expectation. Go to the ER, get examined. To get examined, he needed to change into a gown.

He could hear Morgan and Gideon talking somewhere close by.

Reid hesitated another second, and then reached up to his tie. But that didn’t make sense. His vest first, right? But his hands faltered there, too. Not his pants. His shoes? Or maybe—

“I-I just don’t see why I need to,” He found himself rushing out, “I’m _fine_ , really.”

“Doctor, we really do need you to—”

“I said I’m fine!”

“Doctor—”

“Reid.”

At the sound of Hotch’s voice both he and the nurse turned to the pulled back curtain. Hotch looked in on them, expression as severe as it always was. Reid gulped.

Hotch frowned at the nurse. “Is there a problem?”

The nurse sighed and rubbed the bridge of her nose. She didn’t say anything. Instead when she lifted her gaze up to Reid, she looked piteous. Reid’s stomach rolled.

Reid looked to Hotch and mustered up the least anxious face he could, “Hotch, I’m really fine.”

Hotch’s brows drew together. “You’re covered in blood.”

“It’s from two days ago.”

“Then it may be infected.”

Reid gave a helpless noise. He knew he needed this examination. He needed antibiotics because he was dragged through detritus and Hankel didn’t exactly _shower_ when he hit him, his clothes reeked and the infection from exposure alone was likely—

Reid realized he didn’t actually answer, more because he didn’t know how to say what he needed here.

Hotch looked between the two of them, analyzing the situation the best he could. While Hotch apparently didn’t know how to turn off intensity, there was no sense from him he was irritated or impatient. He gave away little, and Reid appreciated Hotch’s guarded reaction here; worry, pity, or censure would have been worse. Instead Hotch merely looked critical, like he was solving a mathematical problem.

He ended up sighing, and said, “Ma’am, if you would be alright with stepping out, I can—"

“I don’t want the team here.” Reid blurted out, and hated himself for it immediately. Hotch had to understand; Reid _needed_ him to understand. He added on, trying to rectify, “Not. Not until they’re done. With the tests.”

Hotch flicked his eyes to him, his face inscrutable. He didn’t hold Reid’s gaze long enough to ascertain any unspoken response. He nodded. “I’ll keep them away for your examination.”

Hotch paused for a second more, then left. Reid slumped on the bed, and the nurse set down the clip board.

“We can find a private space.” She offered, with a tone too gentle. “Would a bathroom be alright?”

Reid nodded. “I uh… I think I might need help changing.”

“Not a problem, doctor.”

**

“How’s it going in there?”

Reid almost choked on his water. He whipped around at the water cooler, blinking up at Morgan as he recovered from his abrupt entrance. Morgan’s eyebrows shot up to his hairline, arms loosely crossed tightening up and nearly taking a step back at the response.

“Uh. Hi.”

Morgan chuckled a little, relaxed back to the easy posture. “Hi. I scare you there, kid?”

Reid straightened up, used every bit of his height he had on Morgan. He knew he hunched, but he actually _was_ as tall as his colleague. “That’s preposterous.”

“Uh huh,” Morgan said, with as much sarcasm as he could drip into his grunted response. “So? Raja giving you the regular hell and back or she in a bad mood today?”

Reid scrunched his nose, “You know Dr. Priuthi?”

“Yeah,” Morgan nodded. “Talked to her after Chicago. And maybe a couple times since, too.”

Of course. That made sense. Reid just forgot. He felt like he was forgetting more and more, lately, and Reid already knew the reasons why. He wilted a little, feeling oddly humble. “Right, I’m sorry.”

Morgan snorted and shrugged one shoulder. “Why sorry? We all have to. You know, when we,” Morgan mimed quotation marks, “Have an incident.”

Reid resisted rolling his eyes, but he couldn’t control his facial reactions. He needed to smile, he knew Morgan was trying. All that came out was a sneer. Morgan dropped his hand, losing the sarcasm.

“And you know, it also helps. If you let it help.”

Reid wished he could dismiss it, but Reid wasn’t one for hypocrisy. Then again, Morgan didn’t know what he had been through. He remembered a conversation about nightmares, before. That Morgan said he was the last person to talk to. Elle never talked, and now she was gone. How was Reid supposed to figure out what to say in just a few weeks?

Reid sipped at his water, “There isn’t much to say.”

Morgan gave him a small smile, and reached up to squeeze him on the shoulder. “That’s what they all say, pretty boy.”

Reid closed his eyes and willed himself not to flinch.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Reid undergoes final eval on whether he will or will not return to work.

_2/5/07._

God’s will.

Reid passed Raphael’s test, and almost pissed his pants in the process.

Raphael told Reid he had to settle the petty squabbles of man and put their argument to rest before they would stop interfering with the mission. Reid was barely conscious when Raphael pulled the gun and loaded the chamber.

_“You don’t have to do this—"_

Reid tried so many ways to de-escalate, to distract him; he asked Raphael who this squabble was with, though he already knew it had to be the two arguing over him in the cornfield that night. He tried to ask why Raphael had this mission. He tried to explain he wasn’t divine or inhuman, he wasn’t a Satan, he was just a man, Raphael didn’t have to do this, Raphael had a choice, Reid hadn’t _sinned_.

He might as well have been talking to a wall. Raphael regarded him with a detached indifference Reid had only seen in the purest of sociopaths. Reid recounted back to the man crying his eyes out with the gun to Reid’s head only hours before, the rage and conviction in the other side. Dissociative Identity Disorder, DID, Reid had realized quickly, before Hankel pistol whipped him and dragged him delirious and head-throbbing through gravel and dirt to his truck.

Raphael played Russian roulette with him not once that night, but five times. The first click of the gun, Reid flinched as hard as he would if it had been fired. He thought that was it, but when he looked up, the gun was still poised to his skull. Raphael told him his test wasn’t done.

After the third time he pulled the trigger Reid started to cry. The fourth time he started to pray, and Raphael had to force him back upright because he couldn’t bear to stare at the barrel any longer. Raphael gripped him by his chin and held the muzzle an inch from his head. Reid chose to look into his cold eyes instead.

The fifth time, Reid simply stared at Raphael, sucking in erratic, shallow breaths and trembling hard enough to rattle out of his own skin as he waited for his next move. Raphael gave absolutely no indications of satisfaction or antipathy. All he did was raise the gun to the wall, and fire the last chamber. The gunshot split through Reid’s ears, just above his head and he barely heard Raphael speak over the awful ringing.

“You are here for a reason, son of man. We are not through with you yet.”

Raphael left him alone. Heart thundering wildly in his chest, limbs still shaking and tears drying on his face, Reid could not fathom sleeping that night. In the hours that dragged on to dawn, Reid ran through the psychoses that Tobias Hankel likely had, settled on a profile that fit what he had seen. He analyzed his bonds and the cabin, but his head still spun nauseously from the earlier blow. With Hankel in the next room he couldn’t make enough noise to try to break the chair, nor to find something thin enough to pick the lock.

His team would find Hankel’s home, that much was a certainty. He had to believe there would be a bread crumb trail to follow, all he needed to do was wait. He had to have faith in his team. He had to hope JJ was alright.

It was the last thought he had when the adrenaline finally wore out, and Reid passed out in the chair for a few precious hours.

**

_Gunshot—blood, hair caked down sticky and pulling—ringing—_

Twenty minutes later Reid was back in the world’s most uncomfortable chair. His skin was crawling, begging for a relief from the itch and the memories playing out on repeat like a demented film reel. The only thing that quieted it was artificial help. He didn’t dare do anything about it at FBI headquarters, though; he would never be dumb enough to carry dilaudid into HQ.

_Splitting, ringing pain—dripping down his face—_

“Ready to continue?”

Reid nearly dropped the plastic cap he was fiddling with; he’d snatched a water bottle from the break room after draining a few paper cups at the cooler. He twisted it on and placed it by his feet. “Of course.”

Priuthi examined him with her signature blank stoicism, with the addition of a perturbed tension in her features. She apparently had no comment prepared. Instead she sat in the silence, and Reid was never any good at weathering the stifling ambience of quiet. She didn’t even have a clock ticking away in her office. The longer they sat the more her gaze seemed to fixate on him like a mental case and Reid fought the urge to scowl.

Being put on display was never a favorite of his; even when he excelled at school, being shown off as a genius show-pony baby garnered the same feelings as being shoved into lockers and laughed at by his classmates. When he wasn’t show-cased for his strangeness he was bullied for it in the off-time. Even the therapist he was forced to see after his father left had regarded him with grim peculiarity at his reaction to abandonment. He knew he would never be considered anything but “weird”, but here, at his job, he never felt like he had to hide it, or be self-conscious about it.

At least, he never had before.

“Is something the matter?” Reid asked, a bite in his voice he hadn’t heard since college. “Did I miss a cue?”

It made Priuthi finally break the silence. “Doctor Reid, I want to be honest with you. I expected a lot more information on Mr. Hankel’s actions in your incident report.”

Reid scoffed. “Why?”

Priuthi’s mouth quirked, but Spencer couldn’t place whether it was the beginnings of a smile, frown, or a grimace. “There are awful things Hankel did to you, but we know only what we saw from his live feed. You also refused a release of information from the hospital.”

Reid expected that statement to sound more accusatory. What he got was the mental case stare slowly morphing into a pity case stare and Reid sat up straighter. “What about it?”

Priuthi kept herself passive. “Is there a reason you didn’t want this information known?”

“The details were unnecessary, and frankly, they were private.” The words came sharp, cut out in bites between teeth he wanted to grit. Reid knew he was experiencing the early irritability of withdrawal; he had to watch himself, or else Priuthi would realize it, too.

“Alright.” Priuthi conceded. “But I do need to know how you’re coping with it.”

“Fine,” Reid didn’t hesitate.

“Just fine?” Priuthi reiterated, an undermining tactic he knew all too well from interrogations. Reid steeled his breath.

“I’m not happy about it. But I’m fine.” Reid muttered. It didn’t matter. It happened, it ended, and now it was over. Reid wanted to move on. He gestured to Priuthi’s form. “We already discussed this in detail.”

“Oh, yes, I know,” Priuthi agreed with a nod. She stood up then, walked behind her desk to glance at the form they spent an agonizing hour reviewing, one Priuthi already marked as completed. “According to your form, you check all the boxes needed to resume field work.”

He didn’t like that statement. Reid frowned again. “According to my form.”

Priuthi gave a careful smile. “You know, I once read in your file you could ace any test. You did ace, every FBI test put your way. Including your first psychological evaluation.”

Reid noticed his crossed arms. When did he do that? Dammit, classic defensive posture. He forced his hands back to his lap. “Okay?”

“You aced this one, too. In fact, you answered it the same.”

Reid worked his jaw, relaxed it enough to not have to force the words out. “Doesn’t that mean I’m ready to go?”

Priuthi reached into her desk. She pulled out another form, and placed them side by side on her desk. “You answered it the exact. Same way.”

Reid’s heart lodged in his throat. He almost sank in his seat, but he kept his posture upright. He looked pointedly at the two tests side by side, maintaining his practiced poker face. “That’s statistically impossible.”

“Yet here we are.”

How did he miss this? He thought he changed his answers enough, never recite a story, always change the details, just a little, truths never line up perfectly. Interrogation tactics, the most basic tell, how could he miss it? He thought he did enough. Was he that distracted? His mind that unclear?

Reid refrained from clearing his throat again, reached for his bottle instead to take a long drink and gather his thoughts. “Don’t you look for consistency?”

Priuthi nodded. “Sure. Which is why two times, I thought maybe it was a coincidence. But now you answered me verbally, all over again, the same way.”

Reid didn’t answer that time. He took another long sip. So Priuthi continued. Despite her even, conversational voice, the kindness still inside it, dread crawled over his skin like spiders with hot, prickling, creeping panic.

“Sure, there’s some verbiage and adjective change here and there. But your answers for appetite, sleep habits, impulsive behavior, sexual exploits, concentration? It might as well have been plagiarized.”

“I’ve never plagiarized anything in my life,” Reid muttered, apparently choosing that as the hill to die on.

Priuthi was, predictably, unamused. “Dr. Reid. I know you have an eidetic memory.”

Reid steeled his breath and clenched his hand in his lap, out of Priuthi’s sight. He replied levelly, “Are you accusing me of copying my test?”

Priuthi met his gaze and Reid refused to flinch first. Priuthi looked away when she didn’t find what she wanted, released a slow sigh. “I don’t want to.”

She frowned at his evaluations, then turned them both, one by one, upside down. “What I think…is that you knew what answers to fill out to be released, based on past experience. But you did not factor in an important variable.”

Reid refused to incriminate himself. He kept his mouth shut.

Priuthi circled back around to her seat before finishing the thought. “There were never right answers to this test. Only the answers making sense to what you have been through. Human answers. Honest answers. Not right ones.”

The water was gone while the aridness refused to go away. He chewed at his lip, fixated his gaze on his hands when he asked, “Does this mean I’m fired?” Dammit, his voice cracked.

“What?” Priuthi’s resolve broke into genuine shock, “Oh no. No no, Dr. Reid, not at all.”

Reid’s shoulders sagged with relief, though he waited for the “but.”

“But…I am concerned. It’s not my place to say whether or not you do feel fine now. Perhaps you do feel just the same. I have no reason to believe otherwise except, despite you always being the smartest person in the room, you are human.”

Reid picked at a nail, attentive on a frayed cuticle.

“You have a very particular job. One I see you are very good at. It’s also the job that made you go through this trauma in the first place.”

Reid peeked up, waiting for her to finish the point this time. More because he had chewed his tongue almost raw since the accusation.

“Do you think this will affect you differently, upon your return? Your job requires you to find people just like Tobias Hankel."

“It is nearly impossible to encounter someone else like Tobias Hankel.” Reid replied, automatic and likely the most honest statement he had made thus far.

Priuthi hummed flatly, neither agreeing or arguing. “Do you worry about returning to work?”

“No.”

Priuthi smiled politely, and Reid didn’t need to hear the “why.” He pinched his nose, parsing together the best answers here, specifically ones he had not yet regurgitated. He ran his tongue over his teeth, and sighed through his nose.

“I do not have signs of PTSD. I think about what happened, but it’s impossible not do. I passed all my other certifications.”

“And what would those be?

“Physical, medical, firearms.”

Physical, by sheer pity, but that had always been the case. Firearms, by sheer miracle, also always the case. He needed to work on his aim. He still fired too high.

“But not your drug test?”

Reid’s heart nearly stopped. “My what?”

“Your drug test.”

Reid clenched his jaw so tight he heard bone creak. He relaxed it enough to not grit out his answer, but couldn’t hide an antagonism. “It was waived.”

“It was. Two weeks ago. But you should be clear now, correct?”

“I am.” He asserted, though his chest burned with it. They all knew Tobias kept him drugged. That much had been leaked. He had been clean for several days, in case they asked, despite waking up in cold sweats every night. He couldn’t be sure yet if all content levels in his system were flushed; he hadn’t expected another test until the day he came back. If she asked him to do it now…

“Do you not remember completing your drug test?”

Reid blinked at her, mind halting in its rapid panic. “Pardon?”

“Your drug test.” Priuthi’s face was impassive. “You had to take one. You did it three days ago?”

“Right, of course.” Reid carried on the lie, too stunned to do anything else. It tasted like bile on his tongue. “I didn’t think it was back yet.”

“Well, your SAC informed me this morning.”

Reid could kiss Hotch. Also, how in the world did Hotch pull off a drug test? Did Hotch pull off _faking_ a drug test? Reid never peed into a cup. Would Hotch? Why would he? Did someone else? How would they sneak it past _Hotch_?

Wait. Did that mean somebody _knew?_

The gears whirring dangerously towards consternation must have shown on his face, because Priuthi frowned.

“Is there a problem?”

“No,” Reid blinked himself back to present. “Not at all.”

Priuthi didn’t seem to buy it, but she made no further comment on it. “I have just one more question then.”

Reid schooled his features, looking back to Priuthi with arched brows, waiting, open, patient, of sound body and mind. He was about to jump out of his seat.

“When… If this hits you, and it starts affecting you in a way that is hurting you, will you seek help?”

Reid didn’t plan on it, not that he suspected ever needing intervention. He was handling this fine on his own already; no homicidal urges, no drinking or shooting up on the job. He only needed the dilaudid to make the memories calm. Once they faded he would stop. He would be fine, he just needed time.

_Sharp hit—gift—burning—please stop—please—_

But he didn’t know that for sure. Somebody already suspected he had a problem. Reid had barely talked to anyone during his recovery, unwilling to have them to see him this way. So who could possibly have made the assumption?

He supposed he could refuse, or lie, but look at where that got Elle. He couldn’t predict the future. Reid rubbed a hand over his face, and nodded.

“I will.”

Priuthi watched him for another long, agonizingly quiet moment. She answered with no hint of laudation. “Congratulations then, doctor. You are cleared for the field.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Emily makes some mistakes.

_2/8/07._

The nurse, to her credit, didn’t let any form of visceral reaction show when she helped Reid out of his clothes. She’d been briefed already on his captivity, after all. He heard that much out of Hotch from beyond the ER curtain. He felt guilty he couldn’t remember her name. The last two hours all he could concentrate on was keeping the buzzing at bay.

After he changed he was hooked up to monitors, immediate wounds cleaned and treated topically by the nurse, vitals subsequently checked off as stable. They wheeled him out for full body scans in case of further injury he didn’t know about due to drug induced numbness. About two hours from hospital admission—he would be more precise, but they took his watch, and his phone was still dead—he was placed in a private room in intensive care for his more permanent stay. There was no door, but they had the decency of drawing the curtain across the entryway.

When the nurse left to find his doctor, it was the first time in hours he had been alone that night. He couldn’t tell if it was respite, or if the walls seemed a little too close. Only the faint ringing in his ear filled the silence.

The doctor came in with a nurse, as well as what appeared to be an intern maybe a year or two younger than Reid. Her eyes were big, clutching a clipboard close to her chest. Medical scribe, he surmised.

“Hello Dr. Reid,” his doctor greeted. It was always Doctor Reid, as if the salutation made his situation any better. Being called Spencer might have been worse, though. “We’re going to do your documented head to toe assessment now. Due to the nature of your injuries, I will need to catalogue them. Let me know if anything feels off, painful, uncomfortable for your record. I understand you were dosed with dilaudid?”

Reid nodded, and mumbled, “It’s wearing off.”

“As much as I wished that hadn’t happened to you, it will help, for now. We’ll get you some non-opioid painkillers as soon as we can.” The doctor’s face turned solemn, to convey what Reid supposed was seriousness, or some attempt at sympathy. “You’ll also need to debrief with an agent. As I understand, this is part of procedur—”

“I know the protocol,” Reid sighed, impatient, exhausted. “It’s fine.”

Now that he wasn’t immediately in danger of dying, it was time to start his incident report on his captivity. He couldn’t be objective, so an agent would be assigned to the report from an unbiased point of view. Hotch couldn’t do it, and there were few other options. Reid had a good idea who he would pick.

The doctor kept the somber look, “I’ll try to be quick. Would you prefer the agent present or would you prefer to debrief with them after?”

Both options sounded horrific. Reid was starting to hit a limit on interaction however, and while wired adrenaline kept him upright for now, the moment the stimulus stopped he knew he would pass out. He wanted this over with as quickly as possible, so if the agent just took it all in for themselves, it meant less talking, and less time.

“They can come in.”

The nurse left, and Reid was not surprised to see Prentiss shuffle in with her, pad of paper ready and a furrow in her brow. She looked to Reid, and asked, “Are you alright with me?”

Reid barely had the consciousness to consider it. The idea of Gideon, JJ, or Morgan seeing him like his made his insides writhe. They also had the most attachment to him which made them mostly exempt. Neither police or a field agent had the knowledge of the case and the profiling knowledge their team had. Prentiss didn’t know Reid well enough yet, she was new and needed the experience with incident reports that happened more often to their team than not, and she was a profiler. It made perfect, logistical sense. Hotch chose appropriately.

The idea of this being one of Prentiss’s first memories and impressions of him didn’t make his stomach churn less though, just differently. It would mean he would have to take extra care to insure Prentiss didn’t hold on to this image of him for long; that he wasn’t this beaten down body on a hospital bed, nor the broken person on the live feeds the whole team saw. It would have to be good enough. Better this than rebuild the image he tried so hard to achieve with the others. He resisted the urge to curl his knees to his chest, remained on his side facing Prentiss.

“Hotch thinks you’re fine.” Reid closed his eyes then, inhaled a slow breath through his nose, and detached from the clinical report from the doctor as he began.

“Patient’s EKG report is not yet finalized, but preliminary screening shows no obvious signs of heart trauma. Patient’s earlier seizure and subsequent need for CPR appeared to be respiratory only, caused by shock and depression of the respiratory system from repeated injections of the drug dilaudid. We will begin an assessment of patient’s physical injuries. Contusion and laceration to the left side of the skull, between temporal and parietal structures. One, two…four stitches for the injury. Patient noted percussive damage to left and right ears, as a result of repeated hits. Hearing test shows diminished capacity. Permanent damage unknown. No cervical trauma.”

The doctor and nurse did him the courtesy of lifting his clothes only to assess the damage before placing the flimsy gown and blanket back over him. They worked down from head to feet, giving broad stroke statements to bruises littering his arms and thighs, the sprain in his neck muscles from whiplash. X-rays showed no fractures, but MRI showed inflammation and trauma to the tendons in his foot from when Charles beat him, which would explain his current inability to walk.

Reid kept his eyes on the ceiling or the walls the entire time, adamantly not looking to Prentiss.

“Doctor Reid, if you could please roll onto your other side?”

Reid flinched, but obeyed the command, registered a nurse mollifying, “You’re doing great.”

Most of his injuries had remained obscured, Prentiss relying on only the doctor’s report for analysis. With the open gown his back was already exposed, and when they pulled the rest of it aside Reid heard the audible gasp from Prentiss. He was glad he had turned away from her, so she couldn’t see his face twist up and his eyes squeezing shut.

“Multiple burns on patient’s back. Length approximately four to six inches, overlapping, half an inch wide. Wounds are hypertrophic and fresh. Wounds appear to be caused by branding.”

“It was a caning,” Reid muttered, toneless. “He cauterized them.”

“Thank you,” the doctor said quietly, “Please reflect that the wounds were caused by cauterization of open lacerations.”

After a cursory check over his spine and then backs of his legs, both undamaged, the report concluded, and everyone, including Prentiss, filed out of the room. Reid rolled onto his other side again with a wince, the motion pulling at his injured back. Now that the dilaudid was wearing off the steady tempo of the throbbing injuries beat in time to his racing heart. Reid, to the best of his ability, ignored the resurfacing of the pain, once a shadow of sensation now growing until his whole body ached like a bruised, popped blister.

Prentiss should be back in soon, to get his statement and ask any questions needed for concluding the incident report. She was going to ask about the injuries, and she was going to ask about what _happened_ when the videos were off.

He expected Prentiss to come back in; he did not anticipate a field agent to follow, with a camera in his hands. Reid’s hackles rose, darting glances between the two of them before his face contorted in indignation.

“What’s he doing in here?”

Prentiss startled a little, clearly off-guard. “You know the protocol, Reid. We need to take pictures for the report.”

“No,” Reid snapped, forcing himself to sit up despite the pangs that rocketed up his spine, the nauseous tilt to the room when he brought his head up too fast. “No, you don’t.”

No, god no, he didn’t want _pictures_ of this. The hand-written report was required, but not this, no one needed to see this, it didn’t need to be _documented_ and placed in a file, or end up in a paper, broadcasted as one of Hankel’s—

Prentiss, apparently, did not catch on to his irritation. She softened her features, like she was ready to console a—a _child_ , as if Reid wasn’t an agent of the same caliber beside her. She was looking at him like he was just another victim, young and vulnerable, a generation gap below everyone else on the team, smart _but_ , capable _but._

Prentiss pushed on, “It’s part of an ongoing investigation—”

Reid lost his temper then, and it felt strange in his throat, the anger already making his words taste raw, something that hadn’t broiled up in his veins since he was a teenager and he had to defend himself with more than just turning the other cheek.

“Ongoing investigation?” Reid’s voice rose with it, “On what, into me? For shooting him? What, w-w-what, is there a cause for concern on my _justification_ for it?”

Prentiss’s eyes shot wide, freezing up as she took a step back. “What, no, of course not!”

The agent with her went just as tense but Reid didn’t _care_ , letting his voice pick up volume with his outrage. “That’s why you’re here, isn’t it? Everyone questioned Elle, and now you’re questioning _me_? Is it my turn to be put in front of Internal Affairs? I have to _prove_ he deserved to—”

The words caught then, stuck on his tongue because Reid still didn’t know the truth himself.

“Get out!” Reid yelled it, hated how it sounded, hated how it _cracked_.

Prentiss nodded, quick and brash as she grabbed for the curtain, “Reid, I’m _sorry_.”

“Out!”

As soon as the curtain drew back Prentiss nearly ran into Hotch, already in the entryway and poised to enter himself. It startled him enough jerk back, as well.

Hotch looked between the three of them, Reid curled up on the bed with no efforts to mask his ire, the agent clutching his camera for dear life, to Prentiss’s wide eyes and pallor. He zeroed in on Prentiss. “What happened?”

“Reid, um, he’s refusing to. For the pictures,” Prentiss tried, and Hotch’s brow furrowed.

“Pictures are optional,” Hotch explained, tension making his words sharp, “Given that Hankel is already dead. I said ask for _consent_.”

“Oh,” Prentiss’s eyes went wider, “I’m. I didn’t. I’m sorry.”

“Go,” Hotch jerked his head towards the hall. Prentiss and the agent left quickly, and Hotch took a deep breath in the doorway. The curtain was still drawn back by him, and Reid’s skin crawled.

“You can go,” Reid muttered, eyeing that open space warily, and resisted the urge to grab the blanket and wrap himself in it like a cocoon. His skin felt too tight, too small for his body. At least the room had stopped teetering.

He knew Hotch wasn’t going to leave that simply. Reid drew his knees up to his chest, wrapped his arms around them before ducking his chin and waited for the reprimand; almost wishing for it. At least then he’d be treated like an insubordinate agent.

Hotch regarded him carefully, his face still pinched in what he supposed was some level of agitation. It was no secret Hotch was protective of him, just like Morgan was protective, and Gideon, and JJ. They all watched over him like… Reid’s stomach twisted up, barrel-rolls in the cavity of his body. It worsened when Hotch let go of the curtain, and stepped into the room. His hands clenched in the bedsheet.

“What do you need right now?” Hotch asked, and Reid resisted the urge to snap he wasn’t a kid, because he knew that wasn’t the point. He had been injured— _tortured,_ a spitting, cruel side of his mind provided—and there was no denying it. He was…Reid had been Hankel’s unsuccessful eighth…body.

The word ‘victim’ stuck in his mouth like tar, even though he knew it was _true_.

“I don’t need _anything_ ,” Reid lied, bitter with disdain.

Hotch had a brutal scrutiny about him sometimes, one that Reid learned over time wasn’t meant to be contemptuous. Right now he couldn’t determine whether this particular stare was judgment or concern. Either way, it was a careful analysis Reid didn’t need.

Hotch broke the contact, scanning the room until he spotted the chair. He sat in it, arms crossed, feet planted in a pose Reid suspected was supposed to be less antagonistic, but all Reid saw was the stern, authoritative interrogator. The effort was noted, and it almost made him smile.

“No one thinks you were in the wrong, Reid,” Hotch began, and Reid chewed his tongue on the urge to tense, to shy away, to…to react in a way Hotch didn’t need to know. “You were defending yourself. You saved lives.”

Reid rubbed his cheek against his knee. His skin still crawled. The throbbing had only increased, the bone-deep agony stretching him thin and fragile like overworked taffy. His pounding heart worked the opiates through his system faster, and without the dullness his mind was back up to rapid-firing memories; the look in Tobias’s eyes, glassy and gone, the sound of the gun, the burning, the taste of blood, a choice in an impossible moment, skewed together with flashes of the last two days. God, he just wanted it all to go _away_.

When Reid didn’t reply, Hotch spoke again.

“I can’t justify all of us staying for your recovery. The Bureau won’t allow it. But I can allow one person to stay with you.”

“I don’t need it,” Reid grumbled into his knee, barely waiting for Hotch to finish speaking.

Hotch hesitated before answering, “…Are you sure—”

“I don’t need a babysitter, I’m _fine_ ,” Reid spat it out, though he had a modicum of self-preservation left to not actually yell at his supervisor. Reid refused to lift his head, unable to bring himself to look at Hotch and face him, because none of the responses Hotch could have would be welcome; not even apathy.

“No one said you did,” Hotch replied evenly, almost tonelessly like he was controlling a scripted response.

“Good.” Reid forced himself to say through his teeth. “Then go home.”

“…Okay.”

Reid looked up, unable to keep stunned look off his face that Hotch had called the bluff. Then again, was it really a bluff?

Hotch had a million thoughts in his eyes, unreadable but barely bridled, waiting for something to give in Reid’s face. Reid chewed on his tongue, refusing to back down, until finally, Hotch stood. “We’ll see you back in Virginia.”

Without further preamble, Hotch left. No one came to see him after, and when the next day passed with a series of texts informing him they were safe and sound back home, Reid found himself surprised Hotch had actually listened, and left Reid alone.

It didn’t hurt worse, or less. Just differently. He began a letter to his mom that day. He scrapped every draft.

**

He came too close.

Reid had reduced his use to twice a day doses, at half the amount Hankel injected into him. Never on the clock, never enough to knock him out. No psychedelics, so he didn’t have the unfortunate side-effect of invasive memories contorted out of their reality. He didn’t need his already fractured thoughts twisted into something unrecognizable, colored with killers and what happened in that cabin.

The regular, unobstructed memories intruding into his psyche were suppressed well enough with small drug doses and mental exercises. It was enough to keep him engaged for work and focused on the needs at hand. By the time his first day of work arrived, he had no problems compartmentalizing. Reid reasoned that after a few weeks more, he could start weaning himself from the dilaudid entirely.

Or so he thought. Several days in they received their first case in the field, with those poor girls stripped of their voices and—and he came too close.

It felt like he was burning alive by the time he locked himself in the precinct bathroom, heart in his throat, unable to breathe, to think, to speak _—gravel in his hair—sharp—please—_

He didn’t know what he would have done if he didn’t hear Hotch calling for him.

He dosed himself the moment he was on the plane; not enough, not nearly enough, but it quelled some of the rattling underneath his skin, the buzzing in his ears. He still itched, but he had hoped the dose masked any signs of the self-medication.

Morgan was too perceptive, unfortunately. They all were, but Morgan had always been different, a level of consideration and thought when it came to Reid that made him feel raw and exposed. It bothered him a little in the beginning, when Reid only had reason to trust Gideon. Over time Morgan had been let past a few defenses too, and then JJ. Reid regretted that now.

He didn’t know what gave Morgan the powerful insight he had to know when Reid was not himself. Maybe that was why he thought Morgan was the one who suspected he had an addiction.

The idea of anybody assuming he’d become addicted ate at him. Somebody on his team, the ones he was supposed to trust, thought him too weak to fight what Hankel made him do. Reid wasn’t a damn addict, he couldn’t control what Hankel forced into his body. He was managing it fine on his own, it didn’t affect his job or the mind they relied on. It was part of why he lashed out at Morgan, wondering if, despite his best efforts, he could still _see it_.

Priuthi’s words stuck with him. So when the photos surged up memories, ones he could not fight back, he told Morgan. Reid should not have told Morgan.

The next day, Morgan and Garcia announced a proper welcome-back party for Reid for that Saturday, an outing to a bar for all the young and restless members of the team. It went about as Reid expected, happy smiles and too-loud laughter, too many arms around his shoulders teasing him to relax and let loose for once. Karaoke, darts, dancing, ringing in his ears. Reid stayed in his corner for the most part, didn’t bother trying to talk to anyone but his team members when they chose to sit down with him. On the off chance their proximity in a social setting tripped some other perception, Reid stuck to drinking for the night, rather than numbing out the thoughts.

Reid should not have had to take another drug test, he’d realized after that first case back. He was cleared while in the hospital because the use was not of his volition. The Bureau had no reason to scrutinize him so carefully. The only reason for him to be subjected to another, for Hotch or someone else to fake a test, was if someone had let it leak that he might be using it voluntarily.

Reid watched his team members with big grins on their faces with sourness building up in his gullet. One of them suspected. One of them had assumed the worst, and rather than confront him, had pushed to a higher authority to take care of it. Forgive him if Reid wasn’t much up for partying.

His team, graciously, left him alone, despite Garcia’s efforts to get him to sing with her, JJ’s efforts to get him to play pool, and Morgan’s efforts to _talk_. Reid sipped his drink and lied through his teeth, “I’m just enjoying being here.”

The swarm of music pulsing in his ears made his throat vibrate, his temples throb; the buzzing between his ears turned to a whining ring— _strike_ — _gunshot_ —and made the table tilt, his vision swim. The doctors had mentioned a small perforation in his eardrum, one they caught after Reid hadn’t been able to shake the atonal shrill after his flight to DC. It was supposed to fade away soon. Dilaudid helped that, too, but not tonight.

After two hours he deemed it safe to leave without appearing too anxious to get out of the bar. He’d nearly chewed a hole in his lip in the meanwhile, skin crawling, nerves fraying despite the alcohol doing its best to numb. It was fifteen minutes to escape time, according to his watch, when someone touched him on the arm from behind. He jerked away from the touch instinctively _—hit—ringing—grip on neck—burn—_ darting his eyes up in panic.

“Whoa, sorry!” Prentiss said, a little bit of a laugh in her voice to dissuade the clear shock. “Just wanted to check on you, you okay?”

Reid kept his eyes on Prentiss, gaze hardening as his mouth thinned into a tight line. “I’m fine, Emily. Holding my liquor.”

It was harsh, but he didn’t intend it to be anything less.

Prentiss gave an awkward smile, clearly forced. “Mind if I join you?”

 _Yes_ , he absolutely minded. Reid wanted to be left the hell alone. “Go ahead.”

Prentiss slid into the empty spot in front of him, biting the corner of her lip. She was nervous, that much as clear. The last real discussion—for lack of better word—they had was in the hospital. Every time he looked as her since all he could see was her doleful shock, the gasp when she saw his back. Reid straightened up in his seat, nursing his drink and pointedly ignoring her presence.

After a solid few minutes of awkward silence and phone checking, Prentiss spoke. “It’s okay if you need more time, you know that, right?”

Reid had to actively keep himself from gripping his glass too hard. “I don’t need more time. I’m fine.”

“Right,” Prentiss sighed, that same, soft expression from the hospital coming back now. Reid gnawed on his tongue as she continued. “Look, I think I know a little of what you’re going through. So if you need time, or a shoulder, or need a recommendation for counselors…”

“Counselors?” Reid scoffed, “I’ll pass.”

Prentiss’s brow creased then, unsettled by his dismissal. “It’s okay to take the time to clean yourself up.”

Reid’s automatic retort halted, greying out around her choice of words. His voice lowered, almost a seethe when he asked, “Clean myself _up_?”

Prentiss stammered, backpedaling for a different response, “All I meant was, no one is one-hundred percent after something like that.”

It clicked into place fast then. Of course, Prentiss saw his report, how much dilaudid Hankel had made him take. She didn’t know him, not really, not like Gideon, JJ, or Morgan. She had seen him at his lowest so he _must_ be losing his control over this, too, right? She assumed he wasn’t strong enough to fight that dependency. Did she also see the vials he took? How much did she _know?_

“And what?” Reid challenged, “What the _hell_ do you think I need to clean up?”

Prentiss gaped at him for a second before finding her words, “I didn’t mean anything by it!”

Reid laughed, short and humorless, “Sure you didn’t.”

He grabbed his coat off the chair as he stood, shrugging it on quickly and fishing out a few bills from his wallet for the drink.

“Wait, Reid, please don’t go.” Prentiss tried, but Reid didn’t reply. He just headed for the door. He heard Morgan call his name but didn’t halt for him, either. He called a cab home.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Reid is still struggling. He doesn't want help. His job may be on the line.
> 
> (FINALLY this chapter refused to be written, thank u guys for all your wonderful amazing comments, you really give me the motivation to keep going <3\. This one be a long one! Content warning for torture via corporal punishment and MILD mild self-harm.)

_2/6/07._

_“Time to confess, Spencer Reid.”_

Reid hadn’t lied to Hotch; Reid had endured some nasty years in school. He’d had his nose broken, ribs sprained, more black eyes than he could count. He even had a cracked tooth that needed repair from one particularly memorable beat down. Hotch hadn’t inflicted more than a few days of bruising when he kicked his ass. He thought he had a high pain tolerance, after all that.

This didn’t compare.

Reid wished he could lift his hands. He wished he could hide his face, bite his palm or his arm, duck his head, god, _anything_.

All he could manage was ducking his face towards his chin, every muscle in his body tense from the agony of bone-deep, piercing cracks on his instep that jolted hot needles straight up to the base of his spine. He hated the sound of his squeals, hadn’t heard those types of sharp cries from his own lungs since he was a kid and he hated how much that sound hadn’t _changed_. Reid nearly bit through his lip when Hankel was twenty strikes in, tears tracking clean lines down his dirt-caked cheeks.

 _Liar_ , Hankel repeated, over and over, each blow striking harder the more Reid denied his accusation. Whoever had shown contrition in the cornfield was long gone now. All Reid had was the murderous, sociopathic Raphael, and _this._ This identity hadn’t even introduced himself, so Reid dubbed him Jerkface in between biting beats of his pounding head, for the time being. Hankel worked, too, he supposed.

Eventually Reid stopped trying to convince Jerkface and Reid refused to beg for him to stop, sure it would only add more fuel to Hankel’s fiery retribution. Then the next hit struck on the edge of a nerve. Reid couldn’t help it; his foot jerked clean out of Hankel’s hold, snapping in towards his chest on pure reflex to get away from the pain.

Hankel’s mouth pulled into a savage snarl, and Reid had never witnessed anyone actually see _red_ before.

“Sinful boy,” Hankel hissed, “How dare you cower from your punishment?”

“I didn’t, I didn’t, I _swear_ ,” Reid pleaded, hiccupping past his tears. White-hot agony scraped raw every nerve from his toes to his spine, and Hankel hadn’t even been _furious,_ what could—what could he do if—?

“It’s called a peroneal tendon,” Reid tried to explain, “Like the one in your knee, it’s a reflex, you hit a nerve—”

Hankel dropped the paddle and his ankle. He rounded around the chair to Reid, behind him so he couldn’t see what he was doing and braced one heavy hand against his jaw and—Reid’s heart sank like a lead weight to his stomach.

He hoped it would be quick. Not all cervical breaks resulted in death, despite how fluid the movies tried to make them look. It was more likely to injure him, leave him paralyzed or—

Contrary to belief, the worst forms of torture often weren’t visible. Hankel didn’t try to break his neck. He released Reid’s jaw once steadied, then brought both hands down across his ears with a swift, vicious crack. Reid’s vision whited on the splitting pain rocketing from ear to ear, senses flooding with sharp, roaring ocean waves. Reid gaped, unable to even suck in a breath to voice the pain. He buckled over in the chair, finally finding the ability gasp past the roaring. He didn’t hear whatever Hankel said, forming muted sounds as he ripped Reid’s head back by his hair into an upright position. Reid had barely caught his breath when Hankel struck his palms back down, boxing Reid’s eardrums with another piercing pop.

When Hankel steadied his head a third time a panicked sob lurched up from deep from Reid’s chest, making him cower down and cry into his knees, desperate to keep Hankel from hitting him again. He felt like he was going to be sick, his head spinning wildly in an uneven room, tilting the floor dangerously with every spiraling roll of nauseous, riptide waves. Reid doubted Hankel would listen to statistics on ear trauma, deafness, hemorrhage, the long-time damage even from one strike, how Reid could—he could have lost his hearing already, that an embolism could be forming. Not that Reid could string together a coherent sentence about it beyond the excruciating vertigo, or that he thought Hankel would _care_ this could kill him. Reid cringed when Hankel ripped his head back again.

“Stay still!” Reid heard even beyond the residual roaring.

Despite the hurt Reid shook his head frantically, begged between anxious breaths, “Don’t, don’t do it again, please, I’m _sorry_ , I’m so sorry. I won’t fight you, I promise, just—just _please_ not this.”

It sounded deplorable coming out, sobbing for his captor not to damage him this way, but what did he have to prove? It was him and this sadist who refused to listen or believe him, trapped with no assets or bargaining chips for reason or respite. He had nothing to fight for but desperate survival.

He didn’t not strike him again, all pain focused on Hankel’s scruffing him by the hair to crane his neck back for unwanted eye-contact. The deafening hum did not last long, thankfully, and beyond the dimming ocean waves he thought he heard Hankel say, “Pathetic boy you are.”

Hankel’s fury faded from his eyes, hand falling lax in his hair as his expression transformed into hollowed out dispassion. He rounded back around to face Reid with stony apathy.

Reid had to swallow a few times to not garble out the word. “Raphael?”

Raphael scanned him up and down, and murmured, “Pointless.”

Just like that, his torture ended. Raphael turned away, headed to the makeshift facsimile of Hankel’s home computer system he had staged here. He only had one laptop, multiple panels open on the screen. Raphael clicked through different feeds, as if sifting through a menu.

Reid shivered, working his jaw against the muffled ringing still clouding out sound. Raphael at least was occupied, and over the next half hour the pain settled down into a thrumming ache, tears drying tacky on his face. Reid glanced over to Raphael. He hadn’t interacted with the timid identity since last night, and Jerkface was clearly beyond reason. Raphael had about as much likelihood of ignoring him as he did pulling a gun. Reid would have to rely on the assurance he’d passed his test, for now.

“May I ask you a question?”

Raphael paused, hand falling away from the touchpad. Reid’s heart lodged in his throat.

After a minute of contemplation, Raphael glanced to him from the corner of his eye. “You may.”

Reid had met three identities so far, if he counted the meek man at the farmhouse. Tobias, he had responded to, so for now, he’d believe that to be his name. There were plenty of DID cases with upwards of a dozen personalities. Some had more. The average number was two to four, but Reid didn’t want any further surprises. Usually one identity knew about the others, and based on the argument between Hankel’s two human sides, they were not aware they were in the same person.

“It may be more like…” Reid thought, “three questions.”

“You may have one.”

Reid coughed, wracked his brain for the most succinct choice. “The mortal men you spoke of earlier. Are there more you watch over? Any other angels?”

Raphael narrowed his eyes, and Reid caught the slip of the dual question with a wince. Raphael stood and walked over to him, his captor towering tall above him and Reid gulped.

“Only two do I keep my graces upon. My brothers do not need to be here for this exaction of the will of God.”

Reid breathed a sigh of relief. Only the three then. Raphael seemed to be the only murderous side, based on the phone calls, and his actions with Reid. Jerkface, as far as he could tell, was purely a sadist, not homicidal. The last identity—Tobias—had been absent since yesterday, so he was likely buried. Less to worry about.

It wasn’t much consolation, but it was something.

“Thank you,” Reid said, and Raphael tilted his head, almost quizzically. He turned away from him regardless, heading into the back room.

That was when he heard it. It was mostly a mumble, quiet and strained to himself. The voice was different, pitched higher in fear. Reid jumped when he heard a sharp crack, apparently a slap. Hankel’s breath caught, shaking out around what Reid recognized as a sob that devolved into audible, rueful, “I’m sorry.”

He heard the squeak of the bed, followed by silence. Reid breathed another slow sigh.

Hankel was too unpredictable to overpower on his own, that much he knew. His team would find him, so he just needed to wait it out. Just wait Hankel out.

**

“It shouldn’t matter what the Unsub went through,” Reid capitulated, moving a rook in the way of Gideon’s knight. “The trauma and abuse of our perpetrators doesn't absolve them of their crimes.”

“What does it do, then?” Gideon asked, as enigmatic as always. Gideon was better than nothing, though.

Over the last few weeks Reid found himself unwilling and uneager to host long conversations with his teammates. No conversation was a simple socialization, not when each one ended in too-long looks, unsubtle asides questioning his evenings alone or how he looked even skinnier than his normal.

Reid had a handle on his restlessness now—the bags under his eyes didn’t appear any more pronounced to him—so he had to wonder if they all suspected his self-medication. Prentiss had told someone, and not knowing who made Reid’s skin itch. Likely it was Hotch, who then ordered his additional test. He didn’t think Prentiss would tell everyone else too, given all she had were suspicions. Regardless Reid was too careful to have obvious evidence for anyone to see, so neither Prentiss or anyone else had broached him on it directly. Reid almost wished they would, if only to make their pitying looks stop and let this lie. Between Morgan’s unsubtle daily check-ins, Garcia’s straight up avoidance of him but constant links sent to his email of cat videos, JJ’s unshakeable guilt constant in her eyes, and Prentiss’s assumptive badgering of his _situation_ all while wearing kid-gloves _,_ Reid had his fill of sympathy.

Inevitably every conversation left a bitter taste in his mouth, so he stopped bothering.

The only one that had not changed his demeanor was Gideon. Of all his coworkers, Gideon at least treated him with the agent title he’d earned.

“Well, it explains them.” Reid sighed, “We have to understand our Unsubs, sure, but we don’t sympathize with them. Victims deserve that, not Unsubs.”

So here he was, in Gideon’s office for their lunch-break game of chess, and Reid found himself prattling in the silence. Most of the time he hardly noticed the topic of discussion; when it wasn’t his turn Reid filled the space with whatever was the forefront of his mind, whether it was quantum mechanics or the newest book he had read. Gideon assured him he didn’t mind; if anything, it gave him a challenge to focus on two things at once.

It was only when he felt Gideon’s eyes on him, burning like they had on that car ride to the hospital, that Reid realized where his mind had wandered.

Gideon’s mouth quirked with a wane smile as he moved his piece. “Do you believe that?”

Gideon could sound like a therapist sometimes.

“Don’t you?” Reid challenged, “How can you sympathize with someone who chose to kill?”

Gideon chuckled softly, shaking his head with it. “You don’t have to convince me.”

Reid didn’t know why that struck him strangely, his fingers tightening on his bishop.

“Even those with compulsions, they could have sought help.” Reid muttered, a little too sharply.

“Like Roy Woodbridge?”

Reid almost dropped his piece, nullifying his move. He cleared his throat, and retracted his hand, eyes on the chessboard with divided thought.

They had been back a week from Houston, and as always, no one talked about the case. This one, however, left them all with a little less sleep. Woodbridge was a veteran with no control over his actions, trapped in a loop of his PTSD. Unsubs in a psychotic break were beyond reason, they knew this. But break or not…

“That was different.”

Gideon sat back in his seat, hands folded in his lap. “Is it? Should the effects of his trauma be different for him, but no one else?”

Gideon was never this terrible hiding his underlying thoughts, not unless he specifically hadn’t intended to. Reid could hear another question in there, but not one he had the energy to unearth or address. Reid thought of Woodbridge’s wife, the home he would never return to. He thought of the phone call _—piercing, ringing—glassy eyes—_ telling him Woodbridge was gunned down in the street before getting the chance for help.

“He was suffering from extreme mental health concerns,” Reid tried, but his response was quiet.

Gideon nodded, “Many of them are.”

Reid swallowed hard, focusing on his move. Trauma loops. Some of their perpetrators had breakdowns from reality that resulted in trauma loops, actions beyond their own autonomy, but…

They were agents, this was their _job._ They did what they had to do; they didn’t have a choice but to act to save a life. A moment to think, to decide, to _choose_. Sometimes a moment was all they had.

Gideon sighed, took his move immediately after. “Few things are that uncomplicated.”

Reid crossed his arms over himself, compressed down to assuage some of the buzzing building in his chest. It had to be that simple. The work they did was intricate, complex, but the reason was easy, simple to understand.

“So where do we draw the line then?” Reid asked, tension in his words, “Who’s a victim and whose an aggressor?”

Gideon hummed a low tone, focused on the chessboard though Reid knew his attention was elsewhere.

“What do you think that line would look like?”

Reid didn’t answer. His hand shook as he made his move, weighted down by metal-cold shackle for a fraction of a second.

The people who hurt others didn’t get to have excuses, reasons, or doubt; they hurt, they deserved to be convicted. Sometimes they died in the process of bringing them in. It was an outcome as inescapable as it was, sometimes, necessary. Reid believed that. Reid _had_ to believe that.

“Checkmate in three,” Gideon stated, “That was quicker than normal.”

Reid scrubbed his hands over his face. He’d been sloppy lately; he wasn’t as sharp by lunchtime, his skin crawling too much, intrusive thoughts increasing as the hours ticked by. So far he’d refrained from using his work breaks to take the edge off. Maybe if he just…maybe a _small_ dose…

The knock on the door brought both of their attentions up. Hotch was in the doorway, eyes burning on Reid, brows up in that accusatory way like Reid should know what was wrong.

“Reid? A word?” Hotch asked, and Reid frowned. He looked to Gideon, and he shrugged.

“Rematch later?” Gideon supplied casually, an open-ended invite. They rarely had another match in the same day, something Gideon said allowed for their minds to refresh. Gideon only offered as much in the past to provide a listening ear without the boldness of presuming Reid needed it.

Reid swallowed, and deflected. “Tomorrow.”

Gideon nodded, and left it at that as Reid stood to follow Hotch to his office.

“Close the door.” Hotch ordered. Reid chewed his lip; this was a bad meeting, then, not meant to be heard by prying ears.

As soon as he clicked the door shut Reid crossed his arms, not taking the chair in front of Hotch’s desk. Hotch scanned him up and down, assessing Reid’s clear agitation, and sat down himself.

Reid had no idea what this was about, but he planned on making it quick. Hotch did not.

“How are you doing? You’ve been back about a month now.”

Reid almost scoffed at the platitude. Hotch was never one for small talk before. “Fine?” Reid replied, an edge to it, “Is there a reason to think I’m not?”

Hotch’s mouth thinned for a second, then countered in that taciturn way. “Is there?”

Reid despised being interrogated. He was a _profiler._ Hotch could do him the decency of getting directly to the point.

“Is there?” Reid mimicked sophomorically.

Predictably, Hotch grimaced at that before releasing a short sigh. “I’m concerned about you, Reid.”

Of course he was. They all were, and despite his anger and frustration at their responses, he knew he couldn’t blame them. His team had watched Reid be chewed up and spat back out by Hankel, live in real-time, watched him cry, die, and be miraculously revived. Yet he couldn’t help but think it would all be different if Morgan, Hotch, or Gideon had been taken. He was their token _innocent_ team member, the one who didn’t understand innuendo, simultaneously grown up too fast and still not adult enough to them to handle this on his own.

While Hotch hadn’t been so forward as to bother him about his mental state straight out, even he had cast more concerned glances Reid’s way than were warranted. Reid thought Hotch would keep to giving him the dignity of his space. Apparently it was Hotch’s turn to make sure he wasn’t two steps away from a meltdown.

“I don’t need your concern, I’m fine.” Reid answered curtly, nails digging into his bicep.

Hotch scrutinized him carefully, unblinking on him to the point Reid had to fight the urge to shift under the weight of that gaze.

“Fine,” Hotch supplied then, his words biting. “Then this is now a professional concern.”

Reid’s gut clenched up, something corrosive pooling his stomach that seeped acrid through his limbs. He was being careful. He never used on the clock, he was getting sleep now, less nightmares, even. His work hadn’t been effected, he still produced results, he shouldn’t…

“We have a problem, Reid.” Hotch continued, “You aren’t talking to your team, you’re showing up late—”

“It was twice,” Reid snapped, interrupting him against his better judgement to force words out past the creeping dread. “That’s not remarkable. And I didn’t realize I was being paid to make small talk, I’ll add it to the list of profiler responsibilities.”

Hotch’s gaze hardened with a sharp censure. “Reid, you better take this seriously. After what happened in Houston, I can’t keep looking away.”

Reid blinked at him with clear surprise then, though his hackles were already raising, “What about Houston?”

Hotch levelled his gaze on him, unflinching. “Prentiss expressed concern about your behavior, after a situation with a witness.”

Of course Prentiss told him. It shouldn’t have surprised him, not after the drug test, but Reid couldn’t help feeling a pang of betrayal at it anyway. Morgan would have confronted him directly, JJ would have tried to understand. But Prentiss didn’t _care_.

“Wow, what a tattle-tale,” Reid scoffed the impulse, hurt response.

“Reid!” Hotch admonished shortly, “That is out of line.”

He knew it was. It was unprofessional, childish, insubordinate. He kept going.

“Is it?” Reid countered, his voice rising with it, “What, what did _Emily_ tell you?”

Hotch raised his brows, “Beyond your attitude problem?”

“Attitude problem?” Reid almost laughed, it was so absurd. “I don’t like my capabilities being questioned! I’ve been on this team almost four years!"

Hotch was scrutinizing him too severely. “Then act like it.”

Reid fumed at Hotch’s cliché condescension, “Tell that to Emily, she’s the one who thinks I have a _drug problem._ ”

Hotch’s face was too still, all reaction curbed down into quietness. Reid swallowed hard, gritted his teeth down on his poor choice of words. _Alleged_ drug problem. _Supposed_ drug problem. Reid never watched his mouth when he was this pissed.

“Do you?” Hotch asked finally, practically mumbled out.

Reid couldn’t stand mind games like this, he never had. The feigned ignorance, the manipulation angered him more than vitriolic words or abuse thrown his way. He didn’t care if someone’s words hurt, so long as he knew it, he could dissect its meaning and reason, understand the judgment and pity for what it was. He hated it more because he couldn’t even _presume_ that Hotch was pretending to be stupid here, not without risking whatever delicate line had been drawn. Reid was at the end of his wits, though, too strung out, too tired, too many memories haunting him that refused to _die._

Reid’s words continued coming out caustic, “If by problem you mean a serial killer made me take dilaudid six times in a two-day period, yes, I sure do Hotch _._ ”

“Reid—”

He interrupted him, _again_ , because this had been weighing too heavy on his heart, the distrust, the betrayal and _anger_ he had towards Prentiss. “What exactly did she tell you? What’s her proof? Has my work been effected? Is this why I had to a _second_ mandatory drug test after the hospital cleared me?”

Hotch curbed his reaction beyond a furrowing in his brow, his hand clenching on the desk. “What makes you think she recommended it?”

“Who else?” He spat.

“Oh, I don’t know,” Hotch lost his patience then, irritation cutting his words, “Maybe your _supervisor_?”

Reid’s mouth hung open for a moment, stunned, before clicking it shut. His heart hammered hard in his chest, acid on his tongue, cold bleeding through his limbs. Of all the people, he…

“You don’t trust me?” Reid hated how small the words sounded, the anger in him deflated at the shock of Hotch’s confession.

Hotch shook his head, “This isn’t about you. After what happened with Elle, Morgan, and then you? I need to make sure I’m not cutting corners for any of you.”

Reid hated how little Hotch gave in his micro-expressions. Reid could reasonably decipher the nuances of his other team members, accurately attributed lies to words more often than not, even when it came to Gideon. It was a matter of pride as much as it was a matter of his survival. For Hotch, it sometimes felt _impossible_ , and Reid had no idea what to garner from this. Reid was required to take a second drug test, but Reid also never _did._ There was no way Hotch didn’t know.

“Then why did you fake a drug test?”

Hotch blinked at the question, a singular lapse in his composure. Reid waited for confusion, but an austereness darkened his features instead, and Hotch’s voice went low. “I’d be careful what you say next.”

That ticked a nerve, Hotch’s return to the ignorance, pretending Reid was too stupid, naïve, or fragile to understand. “I know, Hotch! You think I wouldn’t find out? I know about the drug—”

“Reid, stop it!” Hotch hissed, his voice still low enough not to carry but Reid still flinched at the scathing reply. “Are you serious about that accusation?”

There was a fire in Hotch’s eyes now, more emotion that Reid had ever seen from him, a defensive bitterness he never would have suspected. It made his words stutter, “Of course I—”

“Because if you are,” Hotch continued, running directly over Reid’s hesitant answer, “I need you to think about how, possibly, one could even manage to do such a thing in a federal facility. What levels of security systems and screening that they would have to go through to fake that electronic report. Then, somehow, have that fabricated result end up on my desk to be hand-signed by me.”

Reid swallowed hard, the implications of it settling like lead in his stomach.

“Once you’ve gathered that, say it again. Because if you are concerned about an indiscretion that severe, someone needs to be fired.”

Reid couldn’t bring himself to say anything. Prentiss wasn’t responsible. Prentiss hadn’t told Hotch. Hotch had suspected anyway, probably looped in Garcia, or maybe Garcia acted first, he didn’t know. The semantic didn’t matter; they threatened both of their careers because…because of a _hunch_.

But would any of them risk so much on a hunch? There had to be signs, ones Reid hadn’t realized or seen. Reid had thought that fogginess in his mind had been clearing, that it was caused by the use and he had curbed it back. Reid swallowed again, the knot in his throat refusing to go away.

Hotch heaved a sigh, bringing his hand up to rub at his temples. “This doesn’t change my concern, Reid. Prentiss never said anything to me but if what you allege is true, then you might need to take a step back from cases for a while.”

Reid’s chest buzzed like a swarm had been released, whiting out even the intrusive thoughts, making his pulse pound and the splitting twinge in his ear rocket up tenfold. The threat of benching him didn’t even register. Reid strangled the words out, “If you had let me do it, I would have been clean.”

Hotch looked up from where he supported his head in his hand now. He gave no reply, but the tension in his face was enough. He didn’t believe him. He didn’t _trust_ him.

“I’m not _lying_ ,” Reid tried, but he couldn’t make his words sound anything more than contrite, “I can handle myself, I don’t need _help_.”

“That’s a narrow point of view.”

Reid’s hands clenched at his sides. “I don’t need a team coddling me.”

“We aren’t.” Hotch’s brow furrowed again, clearly affronted by the accusation. “You’re an agent, Reid, on a _team_ , that requires them to rely on you just as much as you need to rely on them.”

Apparently that wasn’t true. If they relied on him they would have trusted him, they wouldn’t have assumed the worst. Reid had been _trying._ He cut down his doses, stopped drinking some nights too even though it made the nightmares come back. He forced himself to breathe through the memories that knocked the wind out of him like a shot in the chest— _like a blow to the head—like hands in his shirt—like icy water—_

“I want to do my job, Hotch,” Reid strained it out, “I just want to do my job.”

Hotch frowned, dropping his hand form his temple. He straightened up and didn’t look away when he asked softly, and clearly. “Are you _sure_?”

The question was like a gut punch. The second punch came when Reid couldn’t immediately bring himself to say yes.

“I am,” Reid managed to say after a second too long. Hotch didn’t answer at first, either.

He scanned Reid up and down, like he had done back in the hospital, and frowned. “We’ll talk about this again tomorrow.”

Reid nodded absently, beyond processing the implications of that, and left. He remembered objectively what he did the rest of the day; paperwork, consultancy, finishing early to go home.

His routine was the same as it had been for over a month. He settled in, took off his jacket and vest, grabbed food, poured a drink, and went to the bathroom. He started shaking for it before he had the needle filled on the half dose. Despite his nerves screaming for it, his pulse jumping in anticipation of that merciful quiet, he couldn’t bring himself to raise the needle.

What was the point of weaning himself anymore? He had been trying, but apparently it wasn't enough. If he used too much he knew they would find out and fire him; when he used too little his work suffered, perhaps not the output, but he’d agitated his team to the point of _distrust_. Did it matter if he used or if he tried to stop? No matter any dose, any amount of sleep or deep breathing or trying to find a reason for why _him,_ why Hankel did this to him, why fate had landed him in the cornfield that night, it all hurt, it was all too much, it all had damaged the one strength he had, his _brain_.

He was too weak to fight this with his own mind, a brilliant asset to his team that he always knew was a little bit damaged. But now he had to wonder if it was _too_ damaged, a brain he knew would never last with his atrophying genetics now poisoned by this _need_ to numb, to make the hurt go away. He’d always been hurting, he knew, a lifetime of anger and betrayal culminating into…to a fissure that broke in Hankel’s cabin. He was too damaged now, too damaged to be an asset anymore, but his team was too loyal to let him go.

Reid had known for as long as he could remember he wanted to take down bad people. It was the clearest thing he knew, what was bad, what was right, what was wrong. But now…What good was he for if he couldn’t use his _brain_? If he couldn’t do this job…then what?

Reid filled the needle up further, his hands trembling so much he nearly stuck his fingers before setting the syringe down. He gripped the counter tightly, looked up to his own reflection.

The bags under his eyes were no deeper. His face no less gaunt. He had always been thin. He didn’t look so different, he thought, but perhaps it was the concept of the frog in the slow boiling pot; he had no way of knowing the water was getting hotter around him, not until it started to boil him alive. Reid couldn’t remember the last time he didn’t feel that numbing ache inside him, weary and bone deep. He couldn’t remember the last time he felt…

He didn’t want to feel numb anymore, he wanted his mind back, but what else did he _have_? What else could bring him back?

Reid grimaced as his hallowed reflection, reached up fast and slapped himself as hard as he could in the face. The sharp string of it bloomed warm across his cheek, tingling through his skin. He did it again, singing heat through his nerves, alive, present, in his bathroom, in DC, not in Atlanta, not numb, not—

Reid hit himself again. And again. The next crack he heard himself gasp, hand clenching tight on the sink to catch his breath on the pain radiating through his face before he opened his eyes.

He saw Charles looking back.

Reid stumbled into the wall, colliding into it with an unforgiving crack to his skull. He hissed with it, hand flying up. He blinked open his eyes and almost couldn’t look in the mirror.

It was himself again. But not really, not with the pallor, the emptiness in his eyes, the red blossoming over his cheek already fading back to numbness.

Reid curled up on the floor of the bathroom, syringe by his side. He drew his knees up to his chest, and shook silently as he cried.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Reid and Tobias talk. Reid takes some time in New Orleans with a friend. 
> 
> (Here be smut with a shred of plot this chapter. Sex with Ethan is very much consensual.)

_2/7/07._

The day ticked by with no team in sight, which meant wherever Hankel had taken him was remote and obscure enough to evade detection. As the hours passed at the will of Raphael, Charles, and then Tobias, Reid had to come to the only conclusion that mattered. Despite his degrees and his training, scanning through every trick in every book he had ever read, none of it mattered here. He wasn’t Special Agent or Doctor Reid to Hankel. For the first time in years, he felt like small, lonely Spencer. And Spencer had no way out.

Charles moved him to the bathroom once he finished with him for the night. While Jerkface still felt more apt, it was more likely this alter was Charles, the father Tobias spoke of at his home.

He transferred his restraints to the piping of the toilet, but added a chain so at least Spencer could sit up, do his business, not dislocate a shoulder when he laid down on the wood floor for the apparent rest someone—Raphael, Charles, Tobias?—expected of him. Not completely merciless, then. A purely sadistic psychopath wouldn’t have the consideration; then again, the Tobias side didn’t project as unempathetic in the slightest. Hankel, as a whole, was obviously mission driven, which explained the patience. He had time enough to allow him rest, if it meant getting his answers. He wondered why Tobias called Charles “father.” Likely it was some form of self-punishment in an authority figure, both deflection of blame and manifestation of some sort of childhood-based trauma.

Spencer’s thoughts hummed in and out of focus between exhaustion and the growing habit of profiling everything that moved. He found he couldn’t even turn it off some days, an uncomfortable talent made into what felt like compulsion. Hankel eventually filtered into thinking of his friends, where they were, what clues they might have found to find him. His thoughts bled into Garcia’s emotional vibrancy but ability to curb it when needed meant high emotional intelligence. Prentiss’s deflection meant high stress trauma, chronic stressor, prolonged over time, and a need to compartmentalize because of it. JJ’s quiet logic and need to prove herself meant insecurity, stemming from feeling out of place in a world she wanted to belong. Morgan’s hypervigilant protective instinct meant some form of past abuse, young, either to himself or a close family member. Hotch’s resting bitch face and inability to take a joke meant high empathy and uncomfortableness with it. Maybe fear of loss. Hotch probably lost someone, as a younger man. Not like Gideon though, that shut down was obvious, sever any emotional attachment as best he could because—

Spencer giggled to himself; bitch face. He _cursed_ his boss, even if it was only his head. Spencer’s mouth pulled strange on the smile, like it’d forgotten how in the scant 24 hours he had been here. Why was he giggling? Hotch. Hotch’s bitch face. Grumpy sad man face—

Oh right; he was high as a kite. Drugs shot straight in his veins. He caught enough of the label to fill in that it was dilaudid. Spencer snorted again, grin pulling sharp against his teeth. He turned his face into the pillow and found it wet.

His back was sticky with blood from a pre-bedtime caning, coagulating in awkward streaks that pulled at his skin, stuck him to his shirt in uncomfortable grooves and made him shiver in the draft. Charles had used some willowy, sturdy stick, probably thinner than Spencer’s thumb. It looked like a sapling tree branch, not something Spencer ever considered a weapon of torture. He didn’t think an instrument like that could even draw blood. With enough force, apparently anything was possible.

The sounds of his own yelps and screams—the degeneration to wailing, whimpering, sobbing, _begging_ —echoed in his ears, strange, unrecognizable.

His belly clenched up on another sound that Spencer couldn’t classify, so he called it a laugh and buried his face further into the pillow, tucked the blanket around his chin.

Tobias cleaned up some of the blood but didn’t dare do more in case Charles discovered he helped. He did give Spencer the pillow and blanket. He helped Spencer put his button-up shirt back on. Spencer asked to use his sweater vest as an extra pillow instead of redonning it, but to be honest, he didn’t want more pressure on his back. Tobias acquiesced, then implored Spencer to get some rest; gave him another shot of dilaudid to be sure of it.

He didn’t know how long after that he woke up, a little more sober and dehydrated with an awful, pounding headache. The night was quiet, not even the owls hooting outside anymore, or any wind blowing cries through the slats of the house. He strained his ears to listen, and heard nothing. He was alone, as far as he could tell.

He was alone. So very, very alone.

He had no clue why this knowledge was what cracked the dam. It started out as an awful, ugly whimper, bit down to keep his captor from hearing, but then something in him broke. He kept himself together as much as he could through the beating, whipping, caning, being thrown around or and force-fed knock off heroin. This might be the only chance he got to let it hurt. Charles already said no one could hear him anyway. What would Hankel do? Beat him more? Kill him? He knew that already, the simple, matter-of-fact knowledge that he was alone out here, and he was going to die here long before anyone found his corpse. His mom would be notified.

As soon as the first hot tear dribbles down his cheek a sob tore up from his throat, and they just didn’t _stop_. He curled in on himself and cried, wrenching, loud sobs even where he buried his face in the pillow, didn’t stop though every muscle in his gut ached from the force of his shaking.

“Spencer?”

The sound of his voice made Spencer jolt, quelled his tears as fast as it seized his heart. He knew just by the sound of his name it was Tobias. So passive, so shy, so full of remorse. Hankel would be studied for years to come, that was for sure.

He sounded as vulnerable as a child when he whispered, “Don’t cry. He gets madder when you cry.”

Spencer’s swallowed a few breaths to calm down, giving a shaky nod before he looked up. “Thank you for checking on me.”

Gratitude to feed Hankel’s empathy; it was Hostage 101, a lecture through the FBI academy Spencer hated knowing its cruciality.

Tobias hadn’t changed clothes, still wearing the soft, concealing sweatshirt. The only thing that changed was a lack of boots. It was unfair how gentle he looked when he was Tobias, how young. He couldn’t be far from Spencer’s own age, late-twenties at most.

Spencer had long understood that there could be no preconceived notions about the physical appearance or demeanor of an unsub. Age, race, body weight, height, attractiveness, personability weren’t just included, they were parameters. Hankel made sense for his particular crimes. He also knew DID could only come from the cruelest traumas, a shattered compartmentalization in the most extreme ways. Charles and Raphael were irredeemable, but a small part of him wished Tobias could be separated from it. A sudden memory of Nathan panged at him.

Tobias appeared lost for a second, hesitating between leaving and coming inside. Then he reached for his belt. Spencer almost started crying again. He was barely sober from the last hit, he couldn’t take more dilaudid, he _couldn’t_. He scrambled to sit up, pushing himself against the wall away from the toilet, further from his captor.

“I don’t want it, Tobias, _please_.”

Tobias shook his head, kneeling down in the space with him.

“Trust me, it’s the only thing that helps.”

Tobias didn’t listen and Spencer couldn’t think of what to say. This identity was so assured that this was the answer. He was also devoted to taking Spencer’s pain away. There was a nurturing instinct there, one Tobias fought for against Charles. He wanted to help Spencer, but he couldn’t save him. Tobias was projecting too, Spencer was sure, using his own experiences to explain Spencer’s predicament. Maybe it was as simple as Charles _was_ a manifestation of his own father. But wasn’t his father alive? It wasn’t unheard of, he supposed, but it made more sense if it was a priest, or some other type of authority he’d lost.

The needle was up to his arm when Spencer rushed out, “You’ve already done so much to help me.”

Tobias paused. He didn’t inject him, but he didn’t move the needle away. Spencer raced to find the next best words; distract, take focus away from his twitching arm. God, his back hurt. His _everything_ hurt. His mouth tasted raw on the horrifying, intrusive craving to stay quiet and let Tobias push it in.

Spencer settled on, “Why?”

Tobias swallowed hard, the needle pulling away to rest his hands in his lap. Spencer breathed out a slow sigh.

“I. It. It’s not your fault, you didn’t.”

Spencer didn’t have to feign any type of sadness in his voice. “Then why am I here?

Tobias’s hands ball into fists, around vial and needle. His eyes stayed down to the ground. “Because we’re all sinners. He’ll find it. He always does. He did it with them, he did it with…”

Tobias flinched, then shoved vial and needle into his pocket. He stood up just as abruptly after, backing away from Spencer.

“We all sin, we must _repent_ , no, no he doesn’t deserve—but we must confess—”

He didn’t know if Charles or Raphael was about to creep to the surface but _please_ , he couldn’t handle either of them right now.

“Stay with me, Tobias,” Spencer blurted out, searching his face, making himself look desperate. It wasn’t exactly a stretch.

Tobias was halfway out the door when he looked at Spencer like he shocked him. His voice trembled when he asked, “What?”

Spencer needed to be lucid to look for clues, signs, weak points. He needed to keep Charles and Raphael away. If he can keep Tobias here, keep him from getting Spencer high, then he could buy time. He just needed to give himself, and his team, time. He had to believe that would be enough. “Please, I don’t want to be alone.”

Tobias looked over his shoulder, his hands clenching in and out of fists. He was terrified.

“Stay with me?” Spencer tried again. “Until he wakes up?”

The nurturing instinct won. Tobias shuffled inside and sat down across from him, crowding into the small space with Spencer. He hooked his fingers in the belt on Spencer’s arm and loosened it.

Spencer smiled, as relieved as he could manage it. “Thank you.”

Spencer should have known Tobias was not what he seemed, either. He should have realized, pieced together clues, predicted it.

He just wasn’t that good of a profiler yet, he supposed.

**

He and Hotch never had their talk the next day. Hotch was caught in meetings and then a case in New Orleans landed on their desks instead. Reid remembered his old school mate, Ethan, had moved there. It seemed like a sign as much as anything. Whatever it was, it was just what the doctor ordered.

Even in the few scant years, Ethan was both a familiar face and a stranger. His hair had already been long, but the scruff was new, the rumpled clothes not pressed or dry cleaned but laundered by hand. He wondered if Ethan had become one of the types to hang up his clothes to dry in the Louisiana sun.

Ethan’s take to the drink wasn’t new, either. What was new was the ease in his shoulders, his heavy eyes more patient than tired. He didn’t appear strung out, no secrets, no pain.

He and Ethan had known each other well not so long ago. They both graduated high school early, went on to the best schools only hours away from each other. They had the same scholarships, attended the same conventions. Ethan was one of the sharpest people he knew. He was also one of the few people Reid trusted implicitly. It didn’t surprise Reid when, like always, Ethan read him like a book. Reid never thought of himself as unreadable, but between the BAU and Ethan, he was worried he had become too transparent.

“If you think they don’t notice?” Ethan gestured the shakes to him, one Reid already knew invasively well. “Well, for a genius, that’s just dumb.”

He wasn’t dumb. He already suspected some of his teammates before this, and Hotch all but confirmed that _everyone_ was aware he was fractured. They all knew he was too weak to fight what Hankel had done to him, too naïve to know how much it would damage him by going back for more. Too damaged to…

He didn’t need psychoanalysis today. He just needed a break.

Reid’s phone vibrated in his pocket. He cleared his throat and changed topics. “Do you want to get out of here?”

Ethan smiled around the rim of his glass, “Man, you always were to the point, weren’t you?”

Reid shrugged, and looked pointedly at Ethan. “No time to waste?”

“Your phone gonna burn a hole through your pocket?”

There was nothing Reid wanted to do less tonight than his job. And that thought terrified him.

“It’s work,” Reid replied, flat and toneless. “I’m not looking for work tonight.”

Ethan chuckled. He drained his glass and set it aside. “Alright. Come on, my place is only a few blocks away.”

Thank god for small miracles.

Ethan made the walk go by fast, prattling on over the last few years of his life, the places he’d seen, the people he’d met. He seemed to bounce around the entire south in the last three years, playing his music everywhere and anywhere people were willing to let him set down his keyboard. It sounded nice. Reid ignored the way it made his stomach twist up, unsure if it was jealousy or just longing for something with less…blood.

Ethan gave him something else to focus on, at least. The entire walk his hand didn’t leave his body, starting off on his shoulder or ruffling his hair, and by the last block settled heavy on his lower back and practically pushing him towards his apartment. By the time they were jogging up the stairs Reid’s entire body thrummed with pleasant static.

He gave Ethan just enough patience to close the door before he grabbed him by the front of his shirt and dragged him into a deep kiss. Ethan chuckled against his mouth, long fingers sliding up through his hair and Reid’s breath caught when teeth found his lip. Reid dropped his hands to Ethan’s belt, tugged him insistently closer and pulled another laugh from his friend.

“Damn you’re eager, you having trouble getting laid?” Ethan teased.

Reid retorted, “Not everyone sleeps their way through a city in a week.”

Ethan grabbed Reid by his shirt and hauled him into his studio apartment with a bright laugh. “Honey, that just makes me good at what I do.”

“Well, you know they say a man that talks his way through sex doesn’t—”

Reid wheezed when Ethan shoved him onto the bed.

“Sassy shit.”

Reid grinned before Ethan sealed their mouths together with another deep kiss, hungrier than the last. Reid tangled his hands in his hair, dragged him closer and shivered at the slick slide of tongue against his own. He missed this, the banter, the good-natured rivalry. They were never lovers, barely friends. But since they started this during Reid’s first doctorate, Ethan had _always_ been great in bed. That seemed like a lifetime ago, now.

Reid groaned with another sharp bite Ethan gave his bottom lip, returned the favor by burying his mouth under Ethan’s jaw to suck a vibrant mark into the skin.

Ethan’s breath shook, “Oh _fuck_.”

Reid all but whined when Ethan pulled away, shoved him down flat on the bed with a wicked smile.

“You really gotta wear so many layers? You’re in New _Orleans_.”

Reid rolled his eyes and hooked his hands into his sweater vest, yanked it up over his head. He started to unbutton his shirt but his fingers shook and fumbled on the buttons, barely getting the top done before his hands locked up. – _Soft touches, mouth on his neck, the stinging pull of a welt wrapped around his ribs, burning meat, burning—_

Ethan already divested his shirts, warm palms slipping under Reid’s button-up and gliding up his belly and sides, just missing the raised skin on the left side. Reid swallowed hard.

“You been in the East too long,” Ethan tutted, “they’re starving you.”

Reid refocused, pushed down those thoughts as always and snorted at him. “You’ve been in the South too long, you look like a lumberjack.”

Ethan laughed again and thumbed over his chest, deliberately flicking over the hardening nubs of flesh there and Reid’s breath hitched.

“Cheater.”

“ _Cheater?_ ” Ethan guffawed, removing his hands from his shirt to start on Reid’s buttons himself. Reid steeled his breath and helped him, shrugging out of it once undone and was glad he was laying on the bed, for now.

Then Ethan dropped his own mouth to his neck, placing a soft, sucking kiss there that had Reid balling his hands into fists on the bed. It wasn’t the same, it wasn’t—

“Ow!” Reid yelped when Ethan bit his collarbone, and Ethan snickered into his skin.

“That’s for calling me a cheater _,_ Mr. _Counting Cards._ ”

“I don’t count cards, I merely observe probabilities based on the played hands and—” Reid’s defense was cut off by his own strangled moan when an absolutely unfair palm ground down between his legs, over tent of his straining arousal.

Ethan hummed, nodding, “Yup, see, I think Merriam Webster calls that counting.”

Okay, yes, Reid knew he counted cards. “I’m sorry, Mr. Polaski, do I have detention now?”

Ethan snickered, “You did not just— _ninth grade_?”

“Then stop scolding me and get your pants off.”

Ethan saluted him, “Yes sir. You first.”

Reid didn’t have time to process before Ethan dropped to his knees, hands on his belt ripping it off in a few quick tugs. His pants were around his thighs then, Ethan mouthing a wet line over his briefs, following the arch of his hard cock. Reid sat up in an instant, as soon as his hands unshackled from their place—

“Wait, no,” Reid rushed out, nearly bit his own tongue off in the process.

Ethan blinked up at him with wide, startled eyes, hands and lips off of him in a second. “Okay?”

Reid held his breath and willed his racing heart to calm down.

“I don’t want that.” Reid shook his head, took Ethan’s face in his hands and pulled him back up to his knees, between his parted legs. He stole another hard kiss before Ethan asked any more questions, before he could _think_ anymore—briefly wondered if Ethan would object to a pause to his liquor cabinet.

Ethan didn’t ask though, didn’t protest. Instead he pushed Reid up further on the bed, with relative ease between his strength and Reid’s apparently starving body mass index. Reid kicked his pants the rest of the way off so Ethan could settle between his legs, hands bracketing him in. Reid breathed a sigh of relief.

“Just touch me,” Reid said, quieter than intended. He swallowed, “That’s all. I uh, I need—”

“Release?” Ethan finished for him, also far too quiet, and Reid nodded.

Ethan’s mouth twitched into a half-smile, kind, unassuming. “Yeah, I got you sweetheart.”

Reid winced. “Another thing.”

“Yeah?”

“I don’t want sweet.”

Ethan blinked at him, searching Reid’s face for a joke but only found resolve. Another grin pulled crooked across his lips. “Oh, we can do that just fine.”

Ethan leaned in for another kiss but Reid put his hand over his mouth. Ethan peeked patiently up at Reid over his fingers.

Reid cleared his throat. “Don’t remark on my physical appearance. Don’t say anything about my back.”

Ethan creased his brow, but nodded, and Reid released him for another fervent kiss. Ethan grabbed Reid’s wrists and hauled them over his head, wide palms warm and tight around the bone and Reid shivered with it.

“Better?” Ethan asked, and Reid gave a non-committal hum.

“I suppose so.”

“You are really asking for it tonight, huh?” Ethan drawled, playful disbelief making every word like a song.

Reid shifted under him, pulled at the hold that made Ethan tighten his grip, grinding on bone and Reid bit his lip on a whine. “Do I need to make myself clearer?”

Ethan answered that with a bruising kiss, teeth on his swelling lip and a series of sharp bites down the crook of his neck—below the line of his shirt, he noted with appreciation. Reid wasn’t prepared to explain his tardiness with hickeys.

Reid pushed Ethan back long enough to work at his belt. Ethan got the hint, both of them removing the rest of his clothes hindering their contact.

The motions were familiar, but detached like a distant memory, or a memory of a dream. A valley of experience rested between them now, different paths making them almost, _almost_ strangers. But action and reaction flowed together like muscle memory, Ethan’s hands gliding down his chest, Reid’s mouth biting marks on his shoulder; the angle of his bent knees to rest most comfortably over Ethan’s thighs, hips arched up for an offered pillow for best access. The ease of Ethan’s thick fingers pushing inside him, musician’s hands agile that made Reid choke on shameless, needy sounds when they buried inside to the knuckle. His own hand around Ethan’s wrist trying to get him to push that much deeper and getting a quiet laugh in reply. It was enough to muffle the sharp tang of biting hits in the back of his mind, soft touch between the bruises and blood, numbness overshadowed only by horror and pain.

“Come on, come _on_ ,” Reid groaned, impatient, “I’m fine, just get in me.”

Ethan scoffed, “Don’t make me spank you.”

Reid made a show of looking at the ceiling, contemplating that and Ethan groaned with a shake of his head.

“Fine, kid, you’re asking for it.”

Ethan withdrew his fingers, rolled the condom on he’d retrieved from his nightstand. He just coated his cock in lube before he pressed against Reid’s hole, already twitching for it.

Reid’s vision went fuzzy when Ethan pushed in, spearing him open and not relenting until he felt hips flush to the backs of his thighs. It burned, overwhelming heat and fullness making his lungs catch on gasping breaths. It was _perfect_.

“Good?” Ethan asked and Reid’s breath shuddered in, gave him a shaky nod because he didn’t want to speak, he just wanted to feel.

Ethan planted a too soft kiss to his jaw, hand settling on his waist, and rocked, pulling himself back for a sweet, ragged friction, then buried himself back in to the hilt. The stretch, the fullness of him stole his breath with another shaky gasp, Reid’s hands blindly seeking out the curve of Ethan’s shoulder-blades to hold on.

“ _More_ ,” Reid panted, turning his face to Ethan’s hair and breathing in clean scented soap, indiscernible, the cinnamon spice of some sort of cologne. Reid pulled at him, tugging until Ethan obeyed both the audible and silent plea. Ethan settled himself across Reid’s body, mouth against his cheek so they were pressed flushed together down to where they bodies joined, and then picked up his pace, steadying himself with his hands on Reid’s slim hips. He rocked into him faster, and then harder, grinding the tip of his cock against the spot inside that made Reid’s back arch and drag out a moan, nails digging into Ethan’s back.

“There we go, that’s it,” Ethan murmured into his hair, and Reid could hear the grin. He snapped his hips in harder, hitting that spot again, sparking pleasure up his spine and through his own aching arousal. He started a rough pace then, using his grip to Reid’s hips for leverage, slamming up into him hard enough to jar his body, drag his belly over Reid’s straining cock.

“Ethan,” Reid choked out, tightening his knees around Ethan’s waist. He buried his face against Ethan’s neck, nails raking up his spine that pulled ragged groan from the man pinning him with his delicious weight. He said his name over and over in his head, planting it in there, to be sure every other intrusive thought that wanted to rise up was kept at bay with the mantra of this moment. He needed _more,_ more contact, more roughness, something that didn’t feel _numb_. “Come on, _harder_ —”

“Sweet Jesus,” Ethan hissed, and Reid whined when he pulled out. Dammit, no, that’s not—

Ethan rolled Reid over, pushed his shoulders down to the bed and hiked his hips up high. Ethan sank his cock in a moment after, bottoming out inside him and pushing _deepr_ until Reid was sure he’d pop from the stretch. Strong hands took hold of his hips, gripping hard fistfuls, enough to bruise he was sure, used the leverage to pull Reid back into hammering thrusts that _hurt_ , snapping into him so deep, hard, fast that it made his bones ache and light up his nerves like fire.

“Oh god,” Reid trembled out, “Yes, _yes,_ more— _”_

“I’m gonna break a hip if I go harder,” Ethan laughed, breathless and thick, “You wanna take over or you gonna let me do my job here?”

Reid’s laugh devolved to a broken moan, because Ethan chose _that_ moment and slam into his prostate and sing that sweet fire up his spine, his cock aching with need. “Depends,” Reid’s voice was strained, “Is your old age affecting you?”

“ _Three years_ , you damnable shit.” Ethan shoved his head into the bed and Reid bit his lip on a smile.

“Studies have shown three years can drastically dimi—” Reid was finally shut up, breath pushed out of him with another wicked thrust. Ethan’s hands, pinning him rough by his shoulder and hip kept him in place while he, in Ethan’s words, did his job. God, he did it _well_.

Reid’s mind went mercifully quiet, every nerve thrumming with heat and want, his arousal throbbing between his legs where it rocked into soft sheets, damp from his own precome. Ethan’s rough hands pressed hard, tight, bruising his skin as he pounded into him with no remorse or regard for the gasps it pushed out of him. The sound of slapping skin, his gasps, the barely bitten back cries lodged in his own throat. His hands splayed over his head, gripping tight to his sheets; it was enough to fill up the spaces of Reid’s mind and build up walls, to black out the ever-present thoughts of those two days.

He was so lost in the waves of his pleasure that orgasm was almost an afterthought, surprising him when every muscle in his body tightened with it, whiting out his focus entirely as he came with a loud, shaking moan without being touched.

“Oh hell, you—” Ethan gasped, erratic, “That’s it, _sweetheart,_ god _damn.”_

The last clear, pleasant thought was Ethan’s hips locked against him, heat pulsing inside him that always felt so strange and so good. It didn’t last nearly long enough.

By the time Ethan pulled out, memories buzzed in cloudy, intermittent patterns. With his exhaustion they were only hazy, easily pushed it aside when Reid concentrated on other things. He rolled over and chose instead to home-in on the pleasant soreness that stung every time he moved.

Ethan moved aside so Reid could roll over, sliding off the condom and standing up to get a washcloth for them both. Reid accepted it with a smile, eyelids drooping and humming happily with his aches.

Ethan collapsed next to him with a sigh, a grin in his voice when he said, “Never thought Spencer Reid would wear me _out_.”

Reid smacked him in the arm, and Ethan chuckled, rolled over on his side. Reid opened his eyes to look at him with his own grin. “Maybe because I always beat you before you could ever catch your breath.”

“Ouch,” Ethan murmured, no agitation behind it. He leaned in for another slow kiss. “Think I had a contest or two on you.”

“Maybe,” Reid conceded, and slumped back into the pillows, relishing his still thrumming skin, the warm presence of Ethan next to him.

After a few minutes the afterglow faded, and the thoughts sharpened. Grime and fists, hands holding his face, sharp prick in his arm and cuffs making his wrists bruise and bleed—

Reid flinched. He made himself sit up with a short sigh.

“Jesus, darling.”

Reid glanced over his shoulder, with an arched brow. “What?”

“You’re lightin’ up like a black and blue Christmas tree.”

Reid looked down at himself. He was right. He had scratches on his skin, bruises already springing up on his thighs and hips. He poked at one and hissed at the rush of heat that bled though him. He ignored the thrumming that went straight to his abused groin.

“You didn’t do anything I didn’t ask for.”

Ethan scrunched his brow, “I know.”

Spencer looked at him, the quiet saying more than he wanted it to. He scooted to the edge of the bed, back turned to Ethan and toed over his pants.

“Just sayin. You never go that hard.”

Ethan couldn’t see him fiddling through the pockets for a vial. Reid debating the pros and cons of taking the edge off here versus facing Ethan’s judgment. He’d been using more that last few days, the motivation to wean rocky after his conversation with Hotch. Of all the people in his life right now, Ethan was the least likely to react with disgust.

“You haven’t seen me in four years,” Reid replied, offhanded to mask defense.

“You’re right. But my understanding, something big happens when you wanna be feelin’ it that bad the next morning.”

Reid gripped the bottle, his blood already roiling with the need for it. Dirt and rocks scratching lines into his face. Tooth tearing cheek after the seventh hit. Iron filling his stomach. Gunshot in his ringing ears making it rattle like a scream. He could block most of the thoughts out, but not all. Not without help, not anymore. Too weak, too damaged, too naïve, too…

Reid’s free hand drifted up, touched the edge of a scar. His hand fell heavy into his lap.

“You can look at the evidence, too.” Reid said it over his shoulder, but couldn’t look Ethan in the eye. “What’s it telling you?”

“Something hurt you real bad, that’s what. You need to recalibrate, and you can’t figure out if numbing it out or making it hurt worse is what’s gonna reset you.”

Reid was quiet for a long minute, and then chuckled, reiterated Ethan’s earlier words. “Not bad.”

Ethan didn’t reply, though Reid could tell he wanted to. He kept true to his word, didn’t ask about his back, though the mars were on full display. They weren’t as raised anymore, welts faded out to silky scar tissue. Ethan shifted behind him, jostling the bed as he sat up.

Reid held the bottle for a few seconds longer, and shoved it back into his pocket. He reached for his shirt instead and pulled it back on. Back covered, he sat against the headboard with Ethan, looked over at him and suddenly felt too exhausted to speak.

Ethan gave him a soft, understanding smile. It was the first time in months someone’s eyes on him didn’t look like pity.

Reid scratched at his neck. “Do you…”

Ethan waited silently, patiently. Reid took a deep breath.

“Do you keep up with serial killers anymore?”

Ethan studied him, then turned away so he could reach into his nightstand, pulled out a pack of cigarettes. “Not if I can help it.”

Reid gave a short huff through his nose. “Right.”

Ethan flicked open his lighter, took a drag and regarded Reid in the ebb of the conversation. He gestured to Reid while he exhaled. “Some type do that to you?”

Reid swallowed, contemplated the pros and cons, decided there weren’t enough of either.

“Yes, he did.”

Ethan whistled low. “Shit. No wonder you got a poison now.”

Reid cringed, began buttoning up his shirt. He jolted when Ethan touched his arm.

“Easy. I ain’t judging.”

Reid closed his eyes, breathed through the urge to pull away from him.

“I know.”

Ethan did nothing else, his hand falling away. When Reid could only see blackness behind his eyelids again he opened them, cast his gaze down to his lap. Ethan shifted closer to him then, craning his head to get a look at him.

“You guys get him?”

A twitch pulled at Reid’s mouth, maybe a frown, maybe a smile. His statement came out as just that; a phrase, no emotion behind it, merely a fact. “I shot him.”

Ethan sucked his teeth, took another drag. “I’ll be damned.”

Reid scrunched his brow, looked to Ethan for some explanation.

Ethan smiled easy, his heavy eyes kind.

“You looked a devil in the eyes and he flinched first. Even I couldn’t do that.” Ethan saluted him with his cigarette. “No one I know has done that. I’ve been well and truly beat.”

Reid broke into a fractured grin, and didn’t feel shame at his laugh or the wetness in his eyes.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments and kudos greatly appreciated and loved, I live on feedback!


End file.
